upped because I hate it when every time i try to search for something, there's a scribd link for something TOTALLY IRRELEVANT to what I'm looking for on the front page of google masquerading as real content. I don't like their SEO practices and I think the company should change its tactics.
From the article: "2) reducing the aggressiveness of our SEO, which reduces total traffic in the near term but increases the relevancy of Scribd links in search engine results"
That, and, if I am not mistaken, incorporating search terms of previous visitors into the page. Somebody would search for 'iPhone widgets' in Google, click on the Scribd link about totally unrelated'wooden widgets', and Scribd would put 'iPhone' on the page, making it much more likely for the next person to be misdirected.
Well, its like saying that you should sue the police when your house got robbed instead of the robber. Scribd is the one with the intent of gaming the system, Google just wants to provide relevant search results, so its clear to me who should shoulder the blame.
no, its not clear at all, the failing is with Google for preventing what you call "gaming the system", and your analogy is flawed for the same reason. Using your analogy lets say you hire a security firm to protect your most valuable asset, then you get robbed. Who would you blame? Clearly the answer is a function of both.
However, I'm not even convinced of that Scribd have managed to game anything. Can you provide a link to google search results that backs up your claim?
In my view, social publishing is not the same as the "web". Scribd, in my view, represents the emergence of a new wave of article-based content publishers.
Recently, there's been a new wave of text-based content sites that are on the rise:
* Scribd
* HubPages (where I work)
* Squidoo
* InfoBarrel
* Helium
As far as Quantcast/Alexa, scribd is still on top in terms of global unique visitors.
I guess that's sort of my point. "Article-based content publishers"? Sounds like, well, most of the internet! Guess I just don't see the value added but hey, to each his own.
To you, there probably is no value added. To someone not so much "in the loop", there probably is.
Anyone could upload a video they made on their own site, even before Youtube. Plenty of people did. Yet, Youtube changed a lot of things for a lot of people.
To be clear, my point is that people are flocking to these article-based web sites so there must be something there beyond just being text on the web.
The traffic has been growing. At HubPages, we were at 8 million unique visitors in Nov, 2008 and now we are approaching 14 million unique visitors in Aug, 2009.
I would argue that these article-based sites are popular because of the web tools available on them, the community of writers and readers to interact with, and the growing traffic. People want these types of places to add their information.
Sure, they could open a blog account by itself or write anonymously on Wikipedia but it's not the same.
Scribd seemed to be the first of these sites to go mainstream. That was my main point to your question. If there's nothing there, what accounted for Scribd's popularity?
It took me a long time to understand why Twitter was an improvement over RSS. Sometimes, these trends are not obvious until you have the experience of participating with the web site that is growing in popularity.
It's surprising watching the up/down votes for jcapote's comment. I assumed it'd be downvoted to -8 within minutes, but it's been swinging back and forth b/w -1 and +2 for the past 15 minutes. So there are others who also wish to see scribd get down to 0%?
a) Interesting document posted somewhere, say HN
b) Visit scribd, click download link
c) Click pdf
d) *Grrrrr*
e) Visit bugmetnot, search scribd
f) Cut and paste u/p
g) Download and read pdf
The anti scribd sentiment here doesn't surprise me.
I voted up and would do so multiple times if I could. I don't like those slideshow sites that want you to login either or those embeddable slides! They all break page on the web, IMHO.
