4 ms·
Loopt, Justin.tv, Xobni and Scribd in Top 50 Tech startups of 2009
- zacharypinter 17y agoCould somebody please explain to me the value that Scribd provides? Google already indexes PDF's, and Scribd just seems to get in the way of me reaching the content I want.
- justin 17y agoScribd let's people who don't know how to put their pdf, word doc, powerpoint, etc online and make it look good put it online and make it look good. And it's easy. Who else does that?
- axod 17y agoThe most popular content on scribd is actually stupid text files, and images. (Check the most popular by views, all time). Yes. Text, and images, wrapped up and 'streamed' to a flash player. Call me crazy, but I think that's bad for the web. Those text files and images should be free to roam. Not caged up in a horrible flash player. Add to that their aggressive google SEO, and it's a bad bad situation. experts-exchange.com has 1.5m entries in google.com whilst scribd.com has 16m !!!
- vaksel 17y agoscribd seems to spam google a lot, I always find scribd in my results and when you go to the page there is nothing relevant to what I was looking for.
- paraschopra 17y agoThat is why I have avoided clicking on Scribd results, no matter how alluring the document is.
- justin 17y agoNot all documents that contain text can easily be turned into HTML documents that preserve the original formatting and are readable. That is certainly true for the vast majority of people outside the readers of Hacker News. Actually, it's probably true for many of the people who _do_ read Hacker News. Scribd clearly serves a purpose here. If you don't like the presentation (Flash), then don't go to Scribd links off of Google. In fact, you could probably write yourself a Greasemonkey plugin that removes Scribd results from your Google results in 10 minutes! Edit: Alternatively, there's probably another startup in here that does exactly what Scribd does but instead of using Flash just uses HTML and CSS. Then you'd have the best of both worlds, in theory, if it matters that much to the user.
- drusenko 17y agoGoogle Apps does an awesome job at displaying PDFs in pure HTML without using flash. Not sure how they do it, but it's pretty awesome.
- SwellJoe 17y agoThe primary value seems to be similar to that of YouTube...it provides an easy way to share documents, for folks who have no idea how to share documents on the web. It's long been possible to share video, audio, and documents in non-HTML formats, on the web, but not necessarily in a way that normal non-technical folks found appealing. Scribd's phenomenal traffic growth seems to indicate that someone finds it useful, even if you or I don't.
- ig1 17y agoIt's the youtube of pdfs (i.e. you can find lots of pirate books on it)
- tralfam 17y agoI really liked Scribd when it started out. Not so any more. Typical Scribd experience: Search for a document via Google. Google result links to Scribd site. Go to Scribd. Realize the Scribd doesn't actually have that document despite exactly matching title. Get annoyed.
- flooha 17y agoFrom the beginning, it has been very similar to the expertsexchange.com site for me. It's always in google results, I'm always annoyed when I click on one of their links and immediately close the tab. If I do look at the page in desperation, the phrase I searched for in google, using double quotes, is never actually in the document. I don't see that very often with any other sites and this is also highly annoying. I suppose it is effective for their page views and adsense. Does google have a way to down-vote results? It might be great for some people, but I'm not one of them.
- murderofcrows 17y agowow: some awesome companies I haven't heard of here - livescribe, sermo, modu, Nila
- johnnybgoode 17y agoI would probably trust a random HNer's Top 50 list over BusinessWeek's.
- mattmaroon 17y agoYeah, especially because it wouldn't have RockYou on it.
- Elepsis 17y agoI hope there is a very hot place in hell for whomever came up with the idea of "slideshows" for web content.
- mattmaroon 17y agoThere are at least 3 companies on there (none from YC) that have raised tens of millions and appear to be swirling down the drain.
- paraschopra 17y agowhich are they?
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- knightinblue 17y agoNing has been singlehandedly ruined for me by the mylocator.com guy. Thanks to him, it just screams 'SPAM!' everytimg I hear anything about it.