The Scribd Story and the Trip Method | Hacker News Reader

The Scribd Story and the Trip Method

scribd.com

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I must say I haven't hated something with such great passion as I hate scribd and similar services. The only reason why I still end up on scribd.com is because some idiotic friend is not able to link the direct source for the document in question.

I absolutely don't get it how such a service adds value to the web. It's great for scribd to have 60 million readers. I am one of them. Why? Because I'm freaking forced to sign up to download a pdf.

"A social publishing company that aims to liberate the written word by democratizing the publishing process for everyday people". - Sounds great. Could you please provide the link?

I hear you brother, I hear you. It's odd how some things you can just ignore (MySpace in my case) without any bad feeling, but other things (scribd, for example) are a royal pain in the ass.

I hate scribd because it's not a PDF. I'm still not sure what was wrong with PDFs in the first place, but replacing them with an in browser, Flash based thing is insane.

Oh, and as for selling ebooks on the web. What's wrong with Lulu? That's where I can sell a PDF of my GNU Make book and offer people the option of buying a printed copy.

BTW Can someone post a PDF of this?

Lulu can be very expensive.

XLibris is a good alternative which is quite cheap in bulk.

The title of the talk is "How to Come up with Good Ideas for Startups" not "How to add value to the web". The two are not necessarily connected.

Better than most 'how to be successful in 10 easy steps' presentations. The most impressive aspect was listing early failed ideas and what was learned from them.

I'm still not sure I see the point of Scribd, because I had no problem reading PDFs and the like on originating sites before it came along, but hey. Also, we desperately need a new namespace. I am so sick of cutesy homonyms. It's like that phase a few years ago where all edgy books/movies/ articles had a title of the form 'Verbing the Noun'.

I love how more Buzzword Compliant their slides got from Slide 9 to Slide 13 as they refined Scribd.

It started with A way for academics to publish online more easily and ended up with A social publishing company that aims to liberate the written word by democratizing the publishing process for everyday people.

Be wary of anyone who names something after themselves. I thought it was "trip" as in "journey", but no it's "trip" as in "me".

I usually interpret such overt egotism as sarcasm. I hope I'm right at least most of the time.

Yes there was sarcasm in calling it that. If you had heard the presentation you would have gotten the joke.

"A social publishing company that aims to liberate the written word by democratizing the publishing process for everyday people".

This reminds me of that old Tom Lehrer joke about how the problem with folk music is that it was written by common people. If it had been written by professional musicians it would have been good. There are a lot of crap writers out there, giving them a platform doesn't improve anything. Not even for them. If you're a crap writer and can't get your work published you always have the mental salve that the publishers are against you. Once you can upload your crap to scribd you'll discover that it wasn't the publishers after all, it was that you suck. Which is better?

Writing is not easy and barriers to entry (such as editors or agents) actually help filter out a ton of crap.

The assumption that publishing should be democratic is ludicrous as the only books published in a democratic world would be pap that panders to the unwashed masses.

> Writing is not easy and barriers to entry...help filter out a ton of crap

For the aspiring writers out there, the best essay on writing I've ever read:

http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/writing.htm

"Magazines, editors, agents - they all employ young people making $22,000 a year whose job is to read lots of manuscripts and send back letters telling you that you aren't good enough yet: LET THEM DO IT. It's their job. Don't pre-reject yourself."

I've bought random books off Lulu. Most of them are average, as in you could probably write as well, given knowledge of the subject matter. Some of the Lulu books were travel accounts, chock full of navel-gazing type introspection. I think I bought those simply to read about what their trip did for them.

The URL is:

http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/writing.htm

Thanks. I wish there was copy and paste already on the iPhone.

Actually, it's because the attention of the masses is finite. Therefore, less books are published than written. And getting published depends on your academic credentials, (if you're lucky), where you went to University (like East Anglia), or people you know from University who can recommend you to their agent.

Better yet, you should just watch the Elizabeth Gilbert TED Talk, she has it right: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_geni...

This is kind of content-free and contradictory. "Just because you have an idea doesn't mean it's a good idea" vs "bounce ideas off of smart people" vs "Trust your instincts and dont' worry about others' opinions".

Also "Trip method unit"? "Ideation"? That quality/time graph? Is this a joke?

Is this a joke? No, it is not. As a slide show only it might be hard to see the point. But having listen to the speech and knowing how Trip approaches problems, thinks through it and emerges with new ideas it makes a lot of sense. There is a reason why he is very successful.

and that reason is google spamming more textual data (mostly copyrighted) than any site (including wikipedia) on the web

Surely that makes it Google's problem than his? If Google thinks this is spam and it's still sending his site lots of traffic, then he can't be blamed for that, no?

Here's a pic from the event. Trip is so much younger than the other panelists...

http://www.founderinstitute.com/posts/50

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