Scribd, the popular document sharing hub, has finally rolled out a much-needed redesign. The site has long been hampered by a messy homepage that wasn’t attractive for first-time visitors, displaying a list of its top features in lieu of a YouTube-esque stream of featured documents. The old design made it clear that Scribd worked well as a utility, but didn’t make it attractive as a destination site. Now, the new site highlights a sampling of its top documents and includes a number of UX changes that Scribd hopes will remedy this issue.
One of the major changes in the design is a new emphasis on search. Scribd has seen impressive growth since its launch in Spring 2007, and now claims more than 20 million unique visitors monthly. But more than half of that traffic comes from search engines – something that the site would like to change. The new design is intended to make the search function more prominent, encouraging users to turn to Scribd instead of Google or Yahoo when they’d like to find a document. And CEO Trip Adler says that it’s working: while A/B bucket testing the new design, Scribd has seen the number of searches double (the number of uploads increased by 70% as well).
Finally, in conjunction with the redesign, Scribd has ditched its yellow generic “document” logo in favor of something that reminds me of colored pencils.
Scribd’s biggest competitor is DocStoc, a document sharing portal that offers a similar Flash-based viewer.
Looking better so far. Their previous layout was way too cluttered that it was difficult to see what’s going on.
I haven’t logged into Scribd in a while, but strangely when I accessed their website now, it shows me logged-in as antoniocirillo. I can see the profile, and all uploaded documents of that user.
Looks like a major security (cookie mixup) flaw!
Ash,
Please contact me so I can investigate this. My email is jared @ scribd.
Nice but very slow on my mac laptop with firefox. The site may be suffering from the techcrunch effect, but it’s nickname is Slowhand.
I like both sites, but Docstoc seems to have more professional documents, while scribd has more porn. I was searching for a business document and all kinds of porn results came up in my search at scribd, while at docstoc, I found exactly what I wanted Porn Free!
On the intertubes porn always wins. That’s why docstoc will fail.
Cool, congratulations to the Scribd team, rebranding is tricky as hell
Why do i always end up at work when i want see these nice stuff and which inturn is blocked by Websense .**sob**
So this is why I haven’t been able to search My Docs for the last couple of days. Now I wish they would redesign their customer support. I have been sending them reports for months that I am still unable to attach my e-mail addy to my account. And now I am worried. I have put so much stuff in there that there is not an easy way to export all my docs if I decide to move- or rather decide this company is too flaky to hold all my research.
The background of the new doc logo gives the vibe of the Windows trademark.
Their success is based so much on pirated content, that wouldn’t really matter.
Much improved redesign – easy on the eye – everything important is right there on the home page. Still room for improvement though. Money well spent. Well done Trip and the team.
If anyone is looking for an alternative site, drop in at http://www.edocr.com. We have seen companies as well as professionals uploading to both edocr, scribd and docstoc. We do not tolerate porn (I thought Scribd removed all porn after achieving their goal!). As you can imagine, we work with professionals as well as companies in promoting their documents
Why not take a look at http://www.edocr.com today. Happy to talk personally if you have any queries
Best regards
Manoj
I personally am a big fan of docstoc. I obtain many professional documents from docstoc, mutual nda’s, agreements, etc…
Jason Nazar is great ceo and they have some very strong backers and board members that will ensure incredible growth..
Plus, NeoHire has their back..
Keep cranking guys
Well done Trip and the team, looking good. As TechCrunch has previously reported, we (www.twidox.com) are working on a similar site but with heavy focus on academic texts, reports, data, statistics and so forth; basically anything that help others with their work, learning, teaching and research. We are in private –beta right now, so feel free to check out http://www.twidox.com and register for a private-beta invite.
Nices news!
The logo looks very bad. And the site does not look very good also. It has the spacing and that’s it.
Maybe all of these sites should figure out how to enable embeds into Wordpress. Then I’d be impressed. And if they do enable WP embeds and I simply can’t figure it out after umpteen tries, then someone please set me straight.
Nice new interface. It’s very user friendly.
@Scot Haha. WP… You can always write a plugin, you know.
True, or one of these companies could develop a plugin to support a large base of potential customers.
looks better now.
I’m looking for a service like Scribd or Docstoc that can handle CAD files – anyone know of anything?
At YouPublish anyone can publish any kind of file, including CAD of course. It’s also cool because when you publish, you can decide to share it for free, or sell it for whatever price you set. Check it out at http://www.youpublish.com
If the text were any lighter or any smaller it would be invisible.
Heck they even coded their site so the text can’t be resized. I guess they just don’t want to do business with people that wear glasses.
Their designers aren’t exactly innovating – can anyone say mixx.com? The scrolling block up top, the header fonts and colors, etc. Look at those and then go to mixx.com – hmmmmm…
I do like the design though, but they should give some credit to mixx – I’m sure they are behind the scenes.
http://www.widg...08/08/tmp46.png
the logo reminded me of picasa logo. i added that to my post on it.
Scribd is a first-rate tool. After a thorough review of how it works, I signed up.
As a senior technical communicator, I’ve done usability testing for years and find this tool to be one of the sharpest in the shed. The graphic user interface is clean, simple and easy to use.
I also do volunteer civil defense work. Scribd will be a tool we will use in the civil defense area much like Twitter has been added as a tool in the tool kit. I love this: http://www.scri...vacuation-Guide and will add the Volunteer Mobilization Center as I think it will be useful to civil defense professionals.
check out http://www.gazhoo.com for an interesting twist on the scribd and docstoc models.
not much to the logo, simple yet pro.
http://www.Docuter.comaccount
1. Sign up for an account at the Docuter Home page (www.docuter.com). If you already have an account, simply log into your account. Click on the “Upload” button at the top of the page.
2. Next, click on the button labeled “Click to Select Files” and browse your file which you want to upload
3. Click on “Upload Files” button to upload the file. You will see the upload progress and then conversion status.
4. You will then see a Describe Document window, where fill in the document details and enter the folder if any where you might want to save the document. Click on “Save” button. You can also skip this step by clicking on “Skip” button. You will now see your document under “All Documents”. The document is already published now.
5. Click on Document to go to the document page. Click on the Embed button to get the “Embed Codes.”
Here you will see an Embed Code, which you can use to put document on yoru blog or website and a link code which you can use to link to the document from anywhere. Copy the Embed code.
6. Log into your blog site, and Open the post you want to embed the Docuter Document into, or create a new post. Click the tab to switch to HTML mode. Press “Control + V,” which will paste the code into your blog. (for Macs, press Command + V). Click on Save or Publish and your document is embeded into your blog.
Check out a sample document posted on docuter.com