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February 19, 2008

Scribd Steps Up Its Game With iPaper

Erick Schonfeld

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ipaper-logo.pngDocument sharing on the Web via embeddable Flash players keeps getting better all the time. Earlier this month I wrote about Issuu, a Denmark-based startup that does a really good job with image-heavy documents like magazines and photography books. Today, Scribd released a vastly improved upgrade to its document viewer, which it is now calling iPaper. Scribd streams the converted PDF documents to the Flash player, and offers three different ways to view each document: in one long, scrollable window; as a book with page-turning effects, or as a slide show. Check out the book mode in the this document.

Pretty cool, but what’s the business? Scribd allows you to put contextual Google AdSense ads inside each document. Scribd will do a three-way rev share, giving most of its portion of the AdSense dollars to the document uploader. Now all those documents not already on the Web can generate some income.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 10:44 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. Musematic » iPaper

    February 21st, 2008 at 4:23 am

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  1. 4LawNotes.com

    February 19th, 2008 at 11:03 am

    Everytime I read about Scribd, tears rush down my eyes. A fellow associate at my firm and I decided to launch a website called “docYOUment.com” right after YouTube was acquired by Google. The idea behind docYOUment.com was the same as scribd- heck even our slogan was identical… “docYOUment.com- Publish Yourself.” But, we got really busy with a trial and had to temporarily abandon the project. Then came scribd and we lost our “first-to-launch” advantage and got really REALLY disappointed :-( DAMN BILLABLE HOURS!!

  2. sharpshoot

    February 19th, 2008 at 11:07 am

    The fact that you had a job meant that you were more likely to fail anyway.

  3. 4LawNotes.com

    February 19th, 2008 at 11:11 am

    DAMN $100K+ in law school loans.

  4. Andy Gongea

    February 19th, 2008 at 11:11 am

    It is nice to see how this young site has become one powerful site with great resources. This is one usable and rich content destination. kudos

  5. Jared

    February 19th, 2008 at 11:16 am

    Other than embeddable ads, whats the benefit over flash paper?

  6. Zach Weisman

    February 19th, 2008 at 11:21 am

    Can you use iPaper without scribd?

    If they offer iPaper as adobe did flashpaper, they will see far more use.

    There are entities that wouldn’t mind using iPaper (or sharing add revenue with scribd) but would mind being associated with Scribd.

    Interesting to see scribd “open up” the way they have.

    BTW,,, Issuu has a way cooler looking way to finger through pages.

  7. sharpshoot

    February 19th, 2008 at 11:22 am

    Lower footprint than flash paper, free to use, open API - does anyone not read their website anymore?

  8. Zach Weisman

    February 19th, 2008 at 11:24 am

    What are the rebranding opportunities?

    When you watch a Youtube video, there is no mention of Adobe.

    When you see a Googe Ad it doesn’t always say Google.

  9. Bruno

    February 19th, 2008 at 12:01 pm

    Video of the Founder here:

    http://us.intruders.tv/Trip-Ad....._a197.html

  10. Darren Stuart

    February 19th, 2008 at 1:43 pm

    I just don’t find this useful.

  11. Darren Stuart

    February 19th, 2008 at 1:46 pm

    sorry heres more, I don’t find this useful because I would link to the document.

  12. techguy

    February 19th, 2008 at 1:46 pm

    How do they track the Google Adsense by paper? You can’t create custom channels for every single paper. Last I checked there was no Google Adsense API to create channels on the fly. Or am I missing something here that should be obvious? This is something I’ve wanted from Google Adsense for a long time, but never been able to find a solution to track which clicks came from which dynamically generated pages.

  13. Ludwig M. Solzen

    February 19th, 2008 at 2:44 pm

    Really nice app! But then this unpleasant bug.

    Amazed by the beautiful design and friendly user interface, I just checked my website where I embedded some Scribd docs, hoping to find the new viewer, only to find this error message:

    Imagine how many thousands of code embeds out there need this fix!

  14. Ludwig M. Solzen

    February 19th, 2008 at 2:44 pm

    Really nice app! But then this unpleasant bug.

    Amazed by the beautiful design and friendly user interface, I just checked my website where I embedded some Scribd docs, hoping to find the new viewer, only to find this error message:

    http://www.scribd.com/doc/2086106

    Imagine how many thousands of code embeds out there need this fix!

  15. jommer

    February 19th, 2008 at 3:55 pm

    I can’t help but notice some of the striking similarities between the marketing messages, right down to the images used, on both of these sites:

    http://www.scribd.com/ipaper
    http://vuzit.com

    Pictures of money, security vault, “easy to integrate” … Can somebody from scribd please address this?

  16. Jim

    February 19th, 2008 at 4:53 pm

    This looks nice. It isn’t clear from their API docs whether if you “Upload” something for your site whether it also appears on scribd.com or whether you can make it so it only appears on your site. Any ideas (if the latter, I’ll definitely use it…)

  17. Sanibel Photographers of Leap Year Photography

    February 19th, 2008 at 5:15 pm

    All you have to do is look at Amazon’s Kindle to know that anything like this will be a successful. First with text, then the next thing will be photography, and then who knows. Maybe we will be providing wedding albums this way…

  18. Jason Bentley

    February 19th, 2008 at 6:16 pm

    Jim @ 15: Each component of the API lets you mark documents as “private.” Private documents will only appear where you embed them and will not appear on Scribd or in Scribd’s search index.

  19. Jason

    February 19th, 2008 at 7:12 pm

    Does anyone know of any third party software that can convert a pdf to flash and be used only in your local application? Im not looking for an API, but before I read this today I was talking to my client about the same exact thing. Interesting.

  20. Manoj Ranaweera

    February 20th, 2008 at 1:47 am

    Great to see edocr covered here. Guys at Scribd has done a great job - perhaps money well spent.

    Just listened to Trip Adler on intruders.tv, which proves the significant gap between US and the UK when it comes to funding startups.

    I was at Second Chance Tuesday last night listening to Niklas Zennstrom. The issues have not changed. Joost, Skype, etc - its all about getting a foot hold first - what’s called the value creation (demonstrating use of product to users) - before revenue generation.

    This is completely opposite to the traditional business where profitability and cash flow resulting from revenue is the king. I wonder, could a digital startup be value creating (in the eyes of Joost) and be profitable, within 1 to 2 years of setting up?

    If profitability is the goal, what impact does this has on going after traffic (docs + user base)? Or is it all about having a good time?

    Feel free to drop in at: http://www.manojranaweera.com and http://www.nwstartup20.co.uk

    We will update our progress through Mike Butcher in the UK.

  21. Manoj Ranaweera

    February 20th, 2008 at 1:53 am

    4LawNotes.com, you do not always need to be the first with an idea. It’s all in the execution, plus history is littered with companies that have entered the market second or third and have beaten the first mover advantage, e.g. Pepsi.

    Secondly, you can also find ways to differentiate - it’s the application and not the technology that matters at the end.

    Find a way to get your idea to market. Don’t give up that easily. It cost very little to get an idea of the group, if you got enough people believing in your idea.

    Regards, Manoj

  22. mmt

    February 20th, 2008 at 8:41 am

    Not sure if this is money well-spent. To the average consumer there isn’t much difference between this and Flashpaper. Of course, if Adobe was going to discontinue support… I also imagine this will awaken the Adobe beast from its slumber.

  23. Amander

    February 20th, 2008 at 12:43 pm

    I think the real problem is that publishers don’t want to link to external site to give users access to their content, it’s a domain branding issue.

    According to their FAQ:
    Can I host iPaper on my own servers?
    Not at this time. iPaper runs on a professionally managed, highly secure server cluster, guaranteeing that your documents will be accessible and safe at all times. Our server cluster allows us to offer high performance for processing and searching, no matter how many documents you have - at an unbelievably low cost.

    When they can fix this (and I imagine it’d make the process more complicated) I think it’ll be a sure win.

  24. Camilla

    February 20th, 2008 at 2:19 pm

    Scribd needs to get their copyright and licensing straight before they are going to go anywhere. (Flickr is a great model.) They seems to be willfully ignorant in regard to copyright and licensing. Their video promoting ipaper uses several documents (supposedly licensed under the Creative Commons BY-NC license) without attribution and for the commercial purpose of promoting their service. (It’s ironic that one of the documents used is titled “The Fair Use Defense to Copyright Infringement”–it’s a presentation by a lawyer at Fenwick & West LLP.)

    Everything on Scribd appears to be licensed using a CC-BY-NC license, even though at no point does the user agree to this license. The user does not have to agree that they are the copyright holder either, although a note says “don’t upload anything you don’t own the copyright to”).

    Legally, if the license doesn’t hold up, then no one can reuse, redistribute, or even embed documents on Scribd. This seems to be quite a problem for their advertising model, regardless of their problems with copyright infringement.

  25. Missed the real story

    February 22nd, 2008 at 2:16 am

    @# techguy

    Adsense in Adobe Flash now possible

    http://thenextweb.org/2008/02/.....-possible/

  26. Jason Bentley

    February 22nd, 2008 at 10:06 pm

    Camilla:

    You’ve been posting this silliness in every blog post about iPaper. It is not true that everything on Scribd is a CC-BY-NC license, that’s simply the default license. This is changeable in document properties.

    Permission was secured for the documents used in the presentation where necessary.

    We are working with Creative Commons to improve our licensing interface.

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