Docstoc Opens For Business (Documents)
Erick Schonfeld
25 comments »
Want to share some of those secret company files with the world? Starting today, you can upload them to Docstoc and share them in an embeddable Flash player. Actually, the service is more for standard business documents like leases, employment agreements, non-disclosure agreements, wills and the like.
Docstoc is designed to be a shared repository of commonly used forms and documents. (I embedded the press release of Docstoc’s public launch below in a DocStoc player). Docstoc competes with Scribd and is a TechCrunch40 company.
Today, Docstoc is coming out of its private beta into a public beta. Anyone can now upload and share documents. Already, there are 12,000 documents on the site. There is no limit to how many you can upload, and Docstoc accepts the following file formats: .doc, .xls, .ppt, .rft, and .pdf. To encourage people to try out the service, Docstoc is running a contest. Every week in November, the user who uploads the most professional documents (random filler doesn’t count) will get an iPod Touch. To qualify, users must (1) be registered members (join here), (2) upload documents that are publicly shared and (3) the uploaded documents must benefit the community. For a full set of rules click here
Winners will be announced each Sunday at 12:00am PST on the Docstoc blog. Users can see how they are doing in the contest, in real time, by visiting the docsters page and clicking on “most docs this week”
Here is the press release in a Docstoc:
Here are some screen shots:
Potentially a great idea, but a lot of these are legal documents - what assurance do we have that they’re good, and do users who upload have any protection from people who might sue them if they don’t work as planned?
Ben, pretty sure that would be a non-issue, even in today’s litigious society that’s a real stretch.
There are no assurances, but forms in general are a big business. There are attorney-reviewed forms for which you generally pay $$$ for, and non-attorney reviewed forms for which you often don’t. The thesis is that the wisdom of crowds will help with non-attorney forms, which probably originated with an attorney of some indeterminate quality at some point in time. Bottom line is it’s generally better to have a contract than none at all. Then, the more you pay (ultimately to include an attorney), hopefully the better quality you get, but with a cost hit.
Err… This is different from Scribd - how? Uhm, I think “niche” is coming too far here.
Maybe now Scribd will get its act together.
Heyyyy, docstoc is now a public beta!
So, according to their press release, they are the YouTube for professional documents. Does that mean that I need to use my video cam to record my documents, put it to crappy music, have it introduced by a fake 15-year old from Australia, and upload it to some crappy flash interface?
Can anyone say, use Adobe PDF Professional? I don’t see the need for this, albeit the fact that there are many uses for embedded documents to be sent to others. I would stick with Google Docs and Spreadsheets for collaboration and pdfs for showing content in a nice, concrete form. I do enjoy the flash player for these pdfs though… Flash is so widely distributed, PDF’s are as well but not as widely supported by the non-savvy group of users on the web.
I’m unsure as to the goal of this. Replace Google Docs & Spreadsheets? Allow for embedded documents to be shown in flash or is it just another web application?
I’m really curious how they’ve private labeled the Flash Paper UI. I’ve scoured Adobe’s documentation and came across some info on an old (read: Macromedia) Flash Paper API, but there’s not a lot to go on here.
I’d love to understand how they’ve modified the Flash Paper control and branded it. Can anyone enlighten me on this process?
What about the oasis opendocument format ?
More to the point of my last post, I’m completely baffled how Scribd, DocStoc, etc, are encoding uploaded documents into Flash Paper format. Anyone?
So it’s another, more flashy, essay mill? They can wave their hands all they want, that’s what this will devolve into, if anything.
We at MS would never use something like this!
I insist that all memos to me be typed on a typewritter and duplicated with that blue paper stuff!
Now THAT is security!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
Jim,
What makes you think they have modified the Flash Paper control? It looks pretty stock to me - even displaying the fact that Adobe doesn’t really support it anymore - hence the Macromedia logo…
Erick, wonder whether you know that TechCrunch featured http://www.edocr.com on 18th October! We are currently in Alpha with different business model. Best regards Manoj
Oh, by the way, congratulations Jason.
Oh i see. The docstoc logo in the embedded widget.
I’m pretty sure the Flash Paper widget is really just a SWF and as such you can use ActionScript to get access to some of the individual UI components. That’s how you could change the logo…
How do they intend to provide esignatures on stored documents?
What good is storing documents if you can’t recreate as a binding form with a binding signature.
[...]on the surface i agree with you all[...]