Scribd.

This guest post is by Dave Papandrew, one of the founders of Fanpop, a cool Web 2.0 sites for fans of anything under the sun. He checked out the Web 2.0 site Scribd, and here are his impressions.

Scribd is a site that completely evaded my web 2.0 “radar” until I ran across the glowing reviews from Techcrunch this weekend. Now, just because a site gets a great review from Techcrunch doesn’t always mean it’s something to write home about, so I was sufficiently skeptical. In this case, however, after actually spending some time using the site, I do think that the hype is very real and the kudos are well-deserved.

So what is Scribd? Probably the best description is a YouTube for text documents and ebooks. The site’s straightforward purpose can be found in some marketing text on the homepage, “Scribd is a free online library…”. The expectation is that content creators will post their documents online so other users can search and consume these documents.

On the content sharing side of the equation, users are able to upload documents in a variety of supported file formats (pdf, doc, ppt, xls, txt and more). These original documents are converted into .pdf format and accessible via a nifty Flash reader (though simpler formats like .txt are generally presented as HTML text). The Flash reader is very functional and features standard pagination functions, document resizing, magnification, printing, and even a rudimentary search feature. The Flash reader is embedable (now does it remind you of YouTube?) and other standard features like commenting, rating, tagging, and easy adding to social media sites like digg and reddit are available. Clearly, the Scribd team has done its homework when it comes to implementing all the hallmarks of a successful Web 2.0 idea. There are even digg-like lists of most popular items that help you documents generating the most “buzz” for the day.

Design-wise, the site is very clean and easy to navigate. Conceptually, the site is a snap to understand - a far cry from some Web 2.0 sites that leave me scratching my head as to what exactly I’m expected to do.

The content is varied and uneven, which is entirely to be expected in the realm of user-generated content. It remains to be seen what kind of content the site will attract over the long haul. The early signs are very positive. I was able to find several articles of interest. And, if the list of the most popular items is any sign, Scribd will benefit from some high-quality link bait with articles like “Best-Kept Secrets of the World’s Best Companies” and “20 Signs that You Have Grown Up“.

In any event, I’m bookmarking Scribd. This is a great concept. In some ways, it seems so obvious. It shares some similarities to self-publishing sites like HubPages, but seems to posses a much savvier strategy in harnessing already created documents. And yes, there’s a hefty dose of YouTube here, but I also see some comparisons to Wikipedia with respect to Scribd’s potential as a repository for knowledge.

That being said, I’m hesitant to get too frothy on Scribd. I’ve made no mention of a revenue model, since there doesn’t seem to be one present. Will they go the advertising route? Or will they look at a transaction-based model? This remains to be seen.

Spam and unauthorized use of copyrighted material are two other big question marks (I’m sure the Scribd guys are looking closely at these issues). I’m also interested to see how this fits in with Google’s plans to digitize the worlds written materials. While Google’s efforts in this space appear to have been largely in-house (and in conjunction with research institutions), could Scribd’s direct play to the end-user once again outflank the big boys in the same way YouTube managed to run circles around their competitors?

Only time will tell, but in the meantime I suggest you head over to Scribd and give it a test drive.

Thanks Dave! I’m wishing I had checked out Scribd instead. Anyhow, please check out Dave’s site: Fanpop.

Disclosure: My friend Dave is a founder of FanPop. I have no financial interest in the company.

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