Scribd isn’t Flickr. Sure, they’re both similar: both are social “web 2.0” websites established on the principle that people love to share stuff, both let you tag and group objects, both give you unlimited space, and both are great examples of the internet being put to good use. And, let’s not forget, both seem to love to Murdr the English language (pun intended)… But that’s where the similarities end.<\/p>\n
Flickr<\/a> is for photos. Scribd<\/a> is for documents. Period… Or at least that’s the way it should be – theoretically.<\/p>\n So why is that so hard for people to get? Something about Scribd’s ease-of-use and flexibility has made people forget – and it looks like the people up top don’t seem to mind much, either. For instance, “i LOVE Milla Jovovich<\/a>,” a group with over 1500 photos<\/em> pretending to be documents was one of today’s “Featured Groups” on the Scribd homepage.<\/p>\n But the thing is, Scribd isn’t only not<\/em> intended<\/em> for photos, it’s not<\/em> optimized<\/em> for photos either. Users are uploading photos as PDF documents – unnecessarily increasing their size and limiting the photos’ usages. It has limited tagging options, doesn’t support any form of EXIF implementations, and offers all the wrong tools.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What Scribd is<\/em> good for is full-text searching of documents and essays, downloading a file uploaded in multiple formats – regardless of the initial implementation, playing back text as audio, and more. It makes it easy to view documents quickly and easily with their Flash-based reader instead of forcing the users to double-check that they have Microsoft Word and<\/em> Adobe Acrobat installed on the PC they’re currently using. In short, it web-enables content that isn’t already natively supported by browsers – and that’s not<\/em> something that photos need.<\/p>\n Photos are already natively supported by just about every browser on the planet. You embed them, you play them, you save them, and you share them. You don’t need a special program to view them, nor do you need to worry about different proprietary formats and codecs. They just work.<\/p>\n So what is it about Scribd that makes people flock to it instead of Flicrk, even when the latter is so much more enticing when it comes to photo-based options and features? Well, it’s not too difficult to find out.<\/p>\n So what’s a site to do when it’s too popular for its own good?<\/strong> Not that the Scribd admins seem to mind, of course, but seriously?<\/p>\n When Scribd first kicked off, pretty much no one realized what a gold mine sharing text<\/em> could be. A lot of people wrote it off as something only academics and geeks would use – and they turned out to be quite wrong. People love to read, and they love to share. Combine that with an incredibly flexible system, and you’ve got a killer service.<\/p>\n Our opinion? Give it six months or so, and Scribd will give in to popular demand and provide a more comprehensive & full-range of media options that will do away with all pretense and fully support both text and photos.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Scribd isn’t Flickr. Sure, they’re both similar: both are social “web 2.0” websites established on the principle that people love to share stuff, both let you tag and group objects, both give you unlimited space, and both are great examples … Continue reading \n