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cribd /'skr?bd/ is a digital library, featuring a subscription service with prem ier books including New York Times bestsellers and classics. Launched in 2007 by Trip Adler and Jared Friedman, Scribd also features written works contributed by users around the world and is headquartered in San Francisc o, CA. Backed by Y Combinator, Charles River Ventures, and Redpoint Ventures, Sc ribd is a major website with more than 80 million active readers coming to the s ite every month.[2] Scribd's subscription service is available on iOS and Android smartphones and ta blets, as well as the Kindle Fire, the Nook, and personal computers for a monthl y fee of $8.99, and lets readers have unlimited access to more than 100,000 book s from over 900 publishers, including Harper Collins, Rosetta, and Workman.[3] Contents [hide] 1 History 2 Timeline 3 Financials 4 Technology 5 Reception 5.1 Allegations of copyright infringement 5.2 Controversies 6 Supported file formats 7 See also 8 References 9 External links History[edit] The idea for Scribd was originally inspired when Trip Adler was at Harvard and h ad a conversation with his father, John R. Adler, about the difficulties of publ ishing academic papers. He teamed up with cofounders Jared Friedman and Tikhon B ernstam and they attended Y Combinator in Cambridge in the summer of 2006.[4] Sc ribd was launched from a San Francisco apartment in March 2007 and quickly grew in traffic. In 2008, it ranked as one of the top 20 social media sites according to Comscore.[5] In June 2009, Scribd launched Scribd Store,[6] and shortly ther eafter closed a deal with Simon & Schuster to sell ebooks on Scribd.[7] Over 900 publishers including Harper Collins, Workman, Rosetta, Random House, Wiley, Hou ghton Mifflin Harcourt, Pearson, Harvard University Press and Stanford Universit y Press are now associated with Scribd. ProQuest began publishing dissertations and theses on Scribd in December 2009. In October 2009, Scribd launched its branded reader for media companies with The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Huffington Post, TechCr unch and MediaBistro.[8] Over 100 media companies now use Scribd s branded reader to embed source material into their stories. In August 2010, news stories began to break and documents and books began to go viral on Scribd including the overt urned Prop 8 and HP s lawsuit against Mark Hurd s move to Oracle Corporation. In October 2013, Scribd officially launched the first global subscription servic e for digital books, often called the "Neflix for ebooks",[9] giving readers unl imited access to Scrib'd library.[10] The company also announced a partnership w ith major publishing company HarperCollins.[2] The official statement revealed t hat the "majority" of the HarperCollins US and HarperCollins Christian catalogs will be available in Scribd's subscription service. Chantal Restivo-Alessi, chie f digital officer at HarperCollins, explained to the media that the deal represe nts the first time that the publisher has released such a large portion of its c atalog.[11] As of December 2013, Adler is the CEO of Scribd, where he is responsible for the product and strategic direction of the company. Adler was named in BusinessWeek s "Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs 2010" list.[12] Timeline[edit] In February 2010, Scribd unveiled its first mobile plans for e-readers and smart phones.[13] In April 2010 Scribd launched a new feature called "Readcast",[14] w hich allows automatic sharing of documents on Facebook and Twitter.[15] Also in

April 2010, Scribd announced its integration of Facebook social plug-ins at the Facebook f8 Developer Conference.[16] Scribd rolled-out a re-design on September 13, 2010 to become, according to Tech Crunch, the social network for reading .[17] In October 2013, Scribd launched its ebook subscription service, allowing reader s to pay a flat monthly fee in exchange for unlimited access to all of Scribd's book titles. They also announced a partnership with HarperCollins.[18] Financials[edit] The company was initially funded with US$12,000 from Y Combinator, and received over US$3.7 million in June 2007 from Redpoint Ventures and The Kinsey Hills Gro up.[19][20] In December 2008, the company raised US$9 million in a second round of funding, led by Charles River Ventures with re-investment from Redpoint Ventu res and Kinsey Hills Group, and hired as president George Consagra, former Bebo COO and managing director of Organic Inc.[21] Consagra left Scribd and became CE O of Good Guide in August 2010. David O. Sacks, former PayPal COO and founder of Yammer and Geni, joined Scribd s board of directors in January 2010. In January 2011, Scribd raised its largest r ound, bringing in an additional $13M. The latest round was led by MLC Investment s of Australia and SVB Capital and included several previous investors.[22] Technology[edit] in July 2008, Scribd began using iPaper, a rich document format similar to PDF b uilt for the web, which allows users to embed documents into a web page.[23] iPa per was built with Adobe Flash, allowing it to be viewed the same across differe nt operating systems (Windows, Mac OS, and Linux) without conversion, as long as the reader has Flash installed (although Scribd has announced non-Flash support for the iPhone).[24] All major document types can be formatted into iPaper incl uding Word docs, PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, OpenDocument documents, OpenOff ice.org XML documents, and PostScript files. All iPaper documents are hosted on Scribd. Scribd allows published documents to either be private or open to the larger Scribd community. The iPaper document vi ewer is also embeddable in any website or blog, making it simple to embed docume nts in their original layout regardless of file format. Scribd iPaper required F lash cookies to be enabled, which is the default setting in Flash.[25] On May 5, 2010, Scribd announced that they would be converting the entire site t o HTML5 at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.[26] TechCrunch reported that Scribd is migrating away from Flash to HTML5. "Scribd co-founder and chief tech nology officer Jared Friedman tells me: 'We are scrapping three years of Flash d evelopment and betting the company on HTML5 because we believe HTML5 is a dramat ically better reading experience than Flash. Now any document can become a Web p age.'"[27] In July 2010 Publishers Weekly wrote a cover story on Scribd entitled "Betting the House on HTML5."[28] Scribd has its own API to integrate external/third-party applications.[29] Since 2010, Scribd has been available on mobile phones and e-readers, in additio n to personal computers. As of December 2013, Scribd is available through the ap p store on iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, the Kindle Fire, and the Noo k. Reception[edit] Scribd has been praised by several newspapers and magazines, including the New Y ork Times, Fast Company, Forbes, and the Wall Street Journal.[30] In 2013, the c ompany was dubbed the "Netflix for ebooks"[9] by Wired, and is a known pioneer o f the "all-you-can-read" model for ebooks.[31] According to Scribd, more than 80 million readers from over 100 countries use th e site on a monthly basis. Their library includes more than 100,000 subscription books from 900+ publishers, and over 40 million documents and books have been u ploaded to the site. Scribd readers have access to books by famous authors like Kurt Vonnegut, Paolo C