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New startup Scribd "YouTube for documents" - Tons of free ebooks already

techcrunch.com — These guys have a new embedded flash PDF player. If you upload your docs, they'll show you detailed stats on who's reading them, and a map showing where the viewers are from. There are a ton of free programming ebooks on the site, and since anyone can upload them, there are going to be a lot more.

Who dugg this? Made popular Mar 7, 2007

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  • RadiantBeing, on 10/12/2007, -1/+58Wow! All these spam-like comments are totally awesome! Check out their activity profiles:

    http://digg.com/users/marilynbadler/news/dugg
    http://digg.com/users/raburmester/news/dugg
    http://digg.com/users/kbernstam/news/commented

    Two of these users registered today! OMFG my head is going to explode from all the enthusiasm I have about Scribd's legion of spammers!
  • kbkellner, on 10/12/2007, -0/+23Cliff Notes, copyrighted material, etc. I see this site getting in some legal problems in the very near future...
  • coheedcollapse, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18Lame spam attempts aside, this is a decent idea and I can see myself checking it out in the future if I get bored.
  • SniperGX1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13We get it, you are web 2.0 now put the ***** last vowel back in
  • Flummoxer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9At least he used legitimate sources like tubgirl.
  • schroeder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8This site seemed like a cool idea then I saw all these spam comments... blatant spamming positive comments of your site is a sure way to turn people off to your product.
  • RonAcierno, on 02/07/2008, -0/+8Legal trouble = people visiting site= big purchase
  • gabrielwalker, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Evidently... no. They read PDFs.
  • JSchwage, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I'm really getting sick of these "Web 2.0" names. Whatever happened to vowels?
  • peregrine, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Whhhoooaaa boy flash paper in action ( www.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlashPaper ).
  • turrican, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6"lets see... maybe www.sribed.com was taken you retards"

    Somehow, I doubt that was the reason.
  • Lazyboy0172, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Wow, this idea sounded really dumb to read, but after visiting the site, I found myself thumbing through materials, finding similar works on the side and looking through those, even downloading a few.

    Yes in just a few short minutes I found kama sutra, how to get the truth out of anyone, cliffnotes for a book in high school, and how to get any girl into my bed...
    what's wrong with the world today
  • greatblackowl, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6It's only a startup site, and already there are stupid Youtube-like comments.
  • ninesquaredis81, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7The paper on Oedipus on the front page is hilarious. I really hope it was real.
  • daedalus1982, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4i'm not sold but its a great idea
  • evilelf2407, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4i think it would be great if i could download them to my pda. that's the only time i need ebooks.

    on a side note, omg the top story of the essay written by the high kid is absolutely hilarious.
  • zcreem, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Asking friends and family to spam for you is still spam pal!
  • Rice, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I thought this was a spam comment... but then I used the site. Loading ___PDF___FILES___ will *NEVER* be slow, with decent hardware and bandwidth.

    The content is much smaller than video, it's obvious why it's fast... unless digg keeps hitting it.
  • robcornelius, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3surely you mean confusd
  • 1021, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3absolutely right, don't know why you are dugg down. For proof, look at this screenshot of the FlashPaper interface that Adobe built and compare it to Scribd's interface. It's absolutely the same minus the Adobe FlashPaper logo replaced with Scribd logo.
  • bertram, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3wow, not only spam from a Crunch site (is it so damn hard to link right to the website in question?!) but then some spam-y comments on here. It's a two-fer...too bad I can only bury once.
  • laplacian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Site sounded cool, but after looking at it I kept thinking: isnt this what html is for? Also their spam comments made them seem desperate.
  • bjterry, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4What the hell is up with this site (techcruch)? I run NoScript and it tried to run scripts from 10 separate domains! I've never seen any site with so many. Is this just blogspam or what?
  • kungfuice, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I like it
  • kourge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I was just about to point out that Scribd uses FlashPaper, not an "embedded flash PDF player".

    FlashPaper was actually developed by ElectricRain, then bought by Macromedia. After that, Macromedia merged with Adobe.
  • koolaird, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3They are going to get into deep copyright trouble with this.

    Just off the front page I found a copy of Richard Dawkins' best-selling "The God Delusion" in its entirety. that's trouble.
  • 1021, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@surfing
    "Macromedia FlashPaper 2 is a software application developed and distributed by Adobe." --from wiki article
    You are wrong. By the way, I forgot to paste the link I referred to in my earlier comment:
    http://www.fusionauthority.com/alert/124/flashpaper.gif
  • ElwinRansom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Amazing idea for a site, even though it likely won't last very long.
  • zephc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Lots of copyrighted material - get it while you can! E.g.: http://static.scribd.com/docs/akc2oaaazjmqj.mp3 , "The God Delusion" as read by a British robot
  • doctechnical, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You might want to look into something called "Usenet". Tons of books (without that flash crap) there.

    You didn't hear this from me :)
  • guregu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2So now there is Scrybe and Scribd. Someone will get confused.
  • jlove5, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You can't search the text within the documents to find the document that you are looking for. You have to search by title or description. There search is worse than diggs
  • daedalus1982, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1what i want to know is what were you reading for a class in highschool that would have those other choices listed as similars?
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2If you start looking at URL's then half the 2.0 sites in town would be there.
  • chapium, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This needs a little work, its killing my browser:

    http://www.scribd.com/doc/6951/Oracle-9i-SQL-Reference
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1i dont think this will last long as a place to post illigal books, so im getting in early
  • surfing, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Thank you kourge. 1021, just because it's in wikipedia doesn't mean that it is true.
  • eizooo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1i am more and more impressed by flash. thought that since adobe took over, flash degenerates to a bloated slow typical adobe app.
  • Slick50, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Done by triggerstreet.com years ago.
  • webjoseph, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If there is a business model, this seems like a good way to put contextual ads (adsense/ypn) - wonder when that is coming.
  • Quadcore, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2the idea/site die soon, nice try though
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Maybe, but I doubt most publishers are as anal about it as the RIAA is, so we should be good for a long time.
  • shinda, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Is it just me or do such sites point at the fact that the internet got so saturated that even google couldn't save it, so instead of trying to index all the different material on the net we'll instead just put all related material on central servers and have independent sites keep track of them.

    Youtube - videos
    Scribd - documents..

    Real question is how long before google introduces a similar search but incorporates the google docs feature for published documents.
  • toughice, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1YouTube works well because they provide a quick and easy way to get video onto the net. The problem with Scribd is that there are already countless number of ways to get text on the net.

    Video takes up storage space and bandwidth - text is very small and quick and easy.

    This is a web tool that address a problem that isn't really a problem - I don't think it will catch on in the same way YouTube did.
  • savister, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0If you want tons of free ebooks with resell rights, this is the best place to visit. Updated daily too. http://www.bugabong.com
  • nify, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0Awesome. Wow, these are cool!
  • megaboom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Oh god, it's like snowcrash!
  • ajaxdocviewer, on 01/17/2009, -0/+0you can try viewing pdf, doc, xls, ppt files online using http://www.ajaxdocumentviewer.net
  • yakizz, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0Unbelievable! I couldn't see any graphics in IE7 or FF.
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