Scribd, the “YouTube for documents”, has announced that it will be removing all pornographic material from the site beginning May 21.
Here’s the announcement from the site’s blog:
Over the next month, we will be updating Scribd’s Terms of Service to prohibit pornographic documents and images. It’s become clear that adult content is limiting Scribd’s usefulness to educators, parents, students, and publishers - exactly the types of users that benefit the most from our site and services.Starting today, there will be a one week grace period to allow users with adult content on Scribd to download it to their local computer before it is removed from the website.
So how will this affect the YCombinator startup? The site has seen impressive growth since its launch in March 2007, and now says that it has 17 million monthly visitors. It’s also recently been adding new features including an API and iPaper, a replacement for FlashPaper that allows authors to monetize their documents. But there have been claims (NSFW) that much of Scribd’s traffic is generated by pornographic and pirated material (the “Adult” group is one of the largest and most active on the site).
Should we expect Scribd’s traffic to take a nosedive? Unlikely. Porn may have helped Scribd gain momentum in its infancy, but the site has long since proven its use as a blogging tool and a document repository. If anything, it’s surprising that it took Scribd this long to make the switch.
Other players in this space include edocr and Docstoc (both of which are porn-free).
I guess they will create a Adult Version with a different name soon
That’s what the internet is for!
This is a great step for Trip and the Scribd Team!
This is awesome.. The internet community needs some restrictions for a healthy community.
http://www.sitespaces.net/blog.....&11696
This is actually really good news for some entrepreneur out there.
This opens up a place for a Scribd competitor based solely on porn. YouTube’s non-porn policy is the reason a plethora of Web 2.0 “adult video” sites suddenly cropped up. They seem to be doing pretty well.
Like that’s gonna change much. They’ll probably open a new site for porn. Lol.
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Can somebody please explain the differences between scrubd and docstoc?
Anyone want to write a Scribd plugin for HeatSeek?
Wow, the site copied YouTube in every aspect. That tells a lot about the founders.
Bye Bye 16.5 million visitors…
I’d wager a large part of those 17 million are TC embeds.
I think they are doing the right think. if you just visitors coming because of pornographic content you dont need to give your dayy,weeks meybe years to code a web site. just find something form porn seekers and use them with in similar html pages. but if you want to improve your web work and help people to share useful contents to improve their selves and to help the world. that decision is the right one.
Beyond Porn, Scribd has a huge problem with copyrighted texts everywhere. I find the latest O’Reilly books on Scribd no problem - and I can even download them! If I was O’Reilly I shut them down…I’m sure they are losing millions in book sales.
#1 - “Screwd”
deadpool when they get sued all over the place for copyright.
any chance that ning.com will follow this model? ning is ALL about porn…
I understand the educator angle and why scribd is forced to change, but if you want a great example of a mainstream service built on porn, look at flickr. I’ve heard that as much as 90% of the group activity is adult in nature
Once again, Techcrunch only write about Scribd or DocStoc. These are only build on FlashPaper. Not a post on other “non US” initiatives in the document publishing and sharing world like Calaméo, much more promising to me (and not $millions backed)…
Good for them. The business market is just as big.
I guess the main purpose of the site is no porn from the very start, good for them…
Nat
http://www.workersinc.com
Does this mean I won’t be able to upload my soliloquies to Scribd anymore?
@17 Steve,
Photographers love to take pictures of undressed women. We call it art.
That Flickr is full of such art is absolutely no surprise. You will also find an abundance of pet photos. I haven’t run across what I’d call porn on Flickr. Maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough?
This is definitly a good move. What kind of information value does porn material have?
Yes, indeed. Porn contents conventionally go to dedicated porn sites and adult shops.
@leonid, that’s what their search filters are for. seek out the groups and you will encounter the hardest of the hardcore. flickr is probably the biggest xxx site no one talks about.
“I’d wager a large part of those 17 million are TC embeds.”
Does Comscore, Alexa, etc. count embed traffic as traffic to scribd.com?
This will open Scribd up to a different audience using it, that previously would have stayed away.
I reckon it’s a good mood, but as many have said, a “porn” version will open up soon elsewhere.