Scribd: YouTube for Text
March 7, 2007 by Jayvee Fernandez
Filed under Computers
Yes, it’s YouTube for text. Scribd came out of private beta yesterday morning with a fresh angel investment of $300K. I don’t think embedded documents in Flash paper format will ever be as popular as embedded FLVs, but anything that widgetizes user-uploaded content can find comfortable niches.
Of particular coolness is the ability to download text in multiple formats, including audio. While it could use serious improvement, the robotic female voice with a slight British accent is actually bearable.
There is another cool new company in this space. It is called OpenFloodgate. Their slogan is, “Opening the path to publication to everyone.” This site now allows you to share your work (anything that can be uploaded as a doc or pdf) and will soon allow you to sell it. Also, you can make each work public, private, or only available to a select “club.” Check it out at http://www.openfloodgate.com
Hi there!
Thanks for the nice comments about Scribd. We didn’t make the female voice actually; we use a commercial voice made by a company that specializes in this. I agree we have a long way to go before it really rivals human speech.
Best wishes,
Jared