Wikipedia attracted a lot of attention earlier this week when Nikola Smolenski calculated how much paper it would take to print out the English entries in Wikipedia. Smolenski calculated that as of last September, Wikipedia’s English index of informative/controversial articles would fill about 750 400 page volumes. Under the assumption of a 6MB volume, the total site would take up about 2,500 volumes (~15GB).
Today Scribd has released some numbers talking about just how big they’ve gotten as well. Since launching 6 months ago, the site has collected over 178,798 documents. That may not seem like much compared to Wikipedia’s over 5.3 million articles (source) across all languages (as of last September), but Scribd users seem more verbose. Scribd users have uploaded over 1.9 billion words, which would take up over 2,287 of Smolenski’s volumes (13.4 GB). No word on how many of those words are copyrighted.
However, Wikipedia is still obviously the pageview king, drawing over 7 billion pageviews (June) and 42.9 million (Feb) visitors per month, to Scribd’s 3.8 million uniques. Google was responsible for 24% of the traffic, and I imagine the same is true for Scribd. Wikipedia also features highly targeted and edited content to Scribd’s library of reports and rants. Although, unlike Wikipedia, Scribd is helping a lot of people catch up on Harry Potter.
Scribd has had quite a ride since launching over 6 months ago. They sustained a considerable amount of traffic after launch, and eventually went on to raise $3.5 million from Redpoint Ventures. Apparently, easily publishing documents online was not a solved problem.
Here’s a chart of the word growth of both Wikipedia and Scribd:
Note: According to statistics listed on Wikipedia, the site (all languages) has grown from 49,000 words in January 2001 to 1.7 billion words last September (the last reported point). Since the data only goes to September 2006, I extrapolated the growth (yellow) assuming the previous year’s monthly growth rate of 7.7%.
This is non-news. It’s also silly to compare Wikipedia to Scribd. That’s like comparing an art museum to a trash heap. At Wikipedia, articles are under a constant state of editing while at Scribd, you just throw something up. It’s much easier for Scribd to grow it’s word count. Also keep in mind that Wikipedia entries are supposed to be concise.
That chart is completely pointless because all it says is that Scribd is full of crappy stuff that no one reads.
Overall, Scribd is really overrated. We don’t need a “Youtube” of text content. We already have Google to search for us.
Yawn.
Looks like just another grapth from presentation meant to be what the viewer expects to see.
With the Scribd news this week I’d say the slope of that blue line is not guaranteed.
TechDumpster – Wikipedia is obviously bigger than Wikipedia as outlined in the third paragraph. I also think that if Google really solved all our document needs, no one would upload to Scribd.
Granted, Scribd looks to be benefiting from copyright infringement. They’re placed in a more precarious position than Google, which you can use to find pirated content, because they actually host it.
These two are absolutely not comparable. The operative word here is Scribd COLLECTED X documents. How many of these documents are original content? Very tiny percentage. Anybody can create a website in a day with more documents gathered from other sources, especially if they don’t care if it’s legal or not and nobody would care. So why fall for the hype on this one? Why not talk about websites that have real original content instead?
Again, more crap. I’m having a hard time seeing where this is real news. No biggie, I probably have 15 GB of legal documents on my server.
i generally tend to disagree with tech dumpster kind of naysayers but this is really height of compromising journalistic values. how is originial content as against content aggregated (that too blatantly through illegal means) comparable? Feel free to promote any of your interests but please don’t equate good and bad..at least say they are different.. I would like to see scribd execs and VCs going behind the bar and probably they will..
If copyrights were enforced, Scribd would be in serious trouble. You can’t build a business enfringing on other people’s intellectual property. (Actually you can, e.g. YouTube), but you shouldn’t.
I’m sure the author of the Adobe Illustrator WOW book can’t be too happy about losing out on some royalties.
http://www.scri...Wow-Book-Part-1
Behind every great fortune there is a crime.
Lots of words! Sounds like ZDNet!
Those guys kill me!
http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com
I’m disappointed to see those “free” ipod nano “giveaway” ads on your site.
Not a good look. Hope they just slipped in like they do with some of my services when I’m not paying attention.
I don’t believe that Scribd users have a lot to say, as proclaimed in the headline. Yes, they have written a lot of words, but they have collectively said very little. 99.999% of the site is pure, mindless drivel. I hadn’t heard of the site until I came across this post. Frankly, I have probably paid my first and last visit to the site.
>> They’re placed in a more precarious position than Google, which you can use to find pirated content, because they actually host it.
One guy took an old version of my ebook and uploaded it to bloggger. Google hosts that without my permission. And then of course there is TheftTube.
Scribd has turned out to be a nice repository for some of my (original) pdf files, that now form nice linked pictures on my blogs. I like Scribd because it serves my purposes very well but I can understand why some people are aggrieved. Scribd is neither wikipedia (which does not serve my purposes) nor google, but it is quite legitimate to compare volumes, hits, page views and other such statistical trivia, but the three services are very different and I do not think anyone is confused about that.
I think the guy who paid one and only one visit to Scribd is short sighted. I took a cursory look myself and even I could see the problem that Scribd is solving quite successfully. If I was any good at Quark, I could write and publish a book on Scribd that was indistinguishable from a volume from another publisher. Hence…the publisher is on its way to irrelevance. It’s weird when people say Scribd is bad for writers when it’s actually great for writers, bad for the publishers. It seems like the ultimate expression of the Creative Commons.
Comparing words within documents uploaded to Scribd with content authored on Wikipedia is like comparing Flickr to Google Images Search, don’t you think? It takes significantly less effort to upload a 1000 word document than it does to write 1000 words that will withstand the criticism of many other authors (and I might be wise to bet that there is much material at risk of breaking copyright infringement on Scribd than on Wikipedia).
I still think Scribd took a wrong turn as the “YouTube of documents.” I’d rather create a passionate community of users, rooted in the contributions of hardcore enthusiasts (a la Flickr)… in this case, the many great writers around the globe who are now finding recognition of their voices online. I think Scribd had more potential as the Flickr of writing.
u suck booooooooooo it sais 1.9 billion words you liar liar
wel, hullo whats u doing…. btw there is not 1.9 bilon words on this website u losers
alyson addie says heyy.