Scribd CEO Trip Adler Speaks!

Kara Swisher — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:01:24 +0000

Yesterday, BoomTown checked in with Docstoc CEO Jason Nazar about the document sharing start-up.

Today, it’s Trip Adler, CEO of its much larger rival, Scribd.

Launched in early 2007, the San Francisco-based online publishing company allows customers to share a wider range of documents, including books and manuscripts. It now claims to have 10 million documents uploaded.

Recently, some of those landed Scribd in a bit of hot water, with a lawsuit filed by an author alleging copyright violations. The lawsuit claimed that the start-up “built a technology that’s broken barriers to copyright infringement on a global scale.”

No surprise, Scribd denied the allegations.

“Scribd does not want unauthorized content on our site,” the company said. “We built the industry’s leading (filtering) technology to prevent the upload of unauthorized documents. This is one of the reasons why best-selling authors and many of the world’s largest publishers have chosen to put their works on Scribd.”

That includes a deal this summer with Simon & Schuster, a division of CBS (CBS), to sell digital copies of its books, offering publishers more control over pricing and how works are distributed.

Such efforts to become a kind of YouTube for text is certainly part of the plan for Scribd, which has garnered about $13 million in funding, including from Redpoint Ventures.

Of course, YouTube owner Google (GOOG) also has designs in the arena–although it has become embroiled in loud legal battles over the issue with publishers. And so does Kindle-creator Amazon (AMZN), of course.

Those are mighty rivals, along with the need to police itself.

Scribd’s traffic has declined from about 60 million unique monthly visitors to half that recently as it has tried to get a good handle on piracy and other reasons. That traffic has since recovered a bit to about 40 million.

The company has also been adding features, including making the site more social, in order to goose online document and book sales and advertising.

Here’s the video interview with Adler about the business:

[ See post to watch video ]

The Book on Facebook?

Kara Swisher — Fri, 09 May 2008 09:00:36 +0000

While there have been not-so-nice insider books about Facebook, the first major deal to chronicle the rise of the social-networking phenom has been signed by Fortune magazine’s David Kirkpatrick (pictured here).

Titled “The Facebook Effect,” the tome will be (glacially) published in September of 2009 by Simon & Schuster, which noted in a statement that it “will chronicle the amazingly rapid rise of this company as well as the impact it is having on social life, politics, business and even international relations.”

Ah yes, peace in our time via The Wall!

Facebook and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, have agreed to cooperate, said Kirkpatrick, who has written several pieces in Fortune on the much-hyped start-up that have been largely laudatory.

The book, said Kirkpatrick in a phone chitty-chat with BoomTown (while I froze at Little League practice in the-coldest-winter-I-ever-spent-was-a-summer-in-San Francisco) will also not necessarily be tough, but look at the ways Facebook has been the latest to profoundly impact the online industry.

“This is a company that is changing the way we use the Web, and I want to look at where it is going and what it could become,” said Kirkpatrick.

I like a positive attitude, although my book on Facebook–which I have dinged for a lot of stuff over the last year, from its kooky $15 billion valuation to its still-nascent ad business–would have been titled: “There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere.”

Oops! That was actually the title of my second book on AOL, the Facebook of Web 1.0, which chronicled the near-collapse of the company after its disastrous merger with Time Warner (TWX).

That, of course, came like winter follows fall after the first I did, “aol.com,” which told the story of the stunning rise of the online pioneer.

Actually, now that I think about it, it still might work for Facebook!

I kid, David, I kid! Good luck!

BoomTown » Simon & Schuster

Scribd CEO Trip Adler Speaks!

The Book on Facebook?