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Scribd Puts My Old Uploads Behind a Paywall and Goes Onto My Shitlist

blog.ericgoldman.org

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Re: Scribd Puts My Old Uploads Behind a Paywall and Goes Onto My Shitlist

#31

Post by _delirium »

narkee wrote: post #27
_delirium wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't use it myself, but reasons people I know have used it: 1. They don't have webspace and want to put a PDF somewhere online. 2. They do have webspace, but are worried, possibly unnecessarily, that it'll cost them too much money if they send out a link to a big PDF to a large-ish mailing list. 3. For Mac users, where PDFs don't load in a plugin in the browser by default, they want to be able to link to a PDF tha…

>3. For Mac users, where PDFs don't load in a plugin in the browser by default, they want to be able to link to a PDF that opens in the browser instead of popping up an external viewer. FYI, PDFs absolutely load in the browser by default.

Hmm, is that only for Safari? On my OSX machine, Firefox pops up PDFs in an external instance of Preview by default. Presumably I could install the Acrobat plugin, but it doesn't seem to come with it, or to be able to find one already installed on the system. But if Safari does show them inline, then I agree I was wrong about the "default" behavior, since Safari is the default browser.

Re: Scribd Puts My Old Uploads Behind a Paywall and Goes Onto My Shitlist

#32

Post by ulf »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #9

I think there are a few takeaways here: * You have to charge from the very beginning. If you start a free service, and then try to establish a pay system afterward, your users will feel tricked and trapped and they will rebel loudly. Scribd seems to have been in a hurry to get adoption, so they made it free to host documents; as this guy said though, he much preferred hosting with Scribd over doing it manually on his…

charging from the beginning actually scratches two itches: the business can evolve steadily, the revenue benefits the company. And second, as a paying customer I have exactly those "rights" the OP would like to have in this scenario. Trying to implement the early-pay-plan is a whole other story, and I doubt that it would have worked for scribd, had they started charging money without any content. classic chicken-egg-problem

Re: Scribd Puts My Old Uploads Behind a Paywall and Goes Onto My Shitlist

#33

Post by thaumaturgy »

masklinn wrote: post #19
thaumaturgy wrote: post #9

I think there are a few takeaways here: * You have to charge from the very beginning. If you start a free service, and then try to establish a pay system afterward, your users will feel tricked and trapped and they will rebel loudly. Scribd seems to have been in a hurry to get adoption, so they made it free to host documents; as this guy said though, he much preferred hosting with Scribd over doing it manually on his…

> If you start a free service, and then try to establish a pay system afterward, your users will feel tricked and trapped and they will rebel loudly. If you lock behind a paywall things previously available for free, sure. And they'll be right too. An other option is to add features which are only behind a new paywall. Issue then is providing additional services of value and a way for users to discover them.

Just as a case study, Reddit did exactly that, and their users flipped out. Reddit ended up doing OK with it -- they've made at least enough from it to be able to afford some infrastructure upgrades and at least one new hire -- but there was a pretty vocal not-small group of users that were unhappy about it.

Re: Scribd Puts My Old Uploads Behind a Paywall and Goes Onto My Shitlist

#35

Post by 30thElement »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #33
masklinn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you start a free service, and then try to establish a pay system afterward, your users will feel tricked and trapped and they will rebel loudly. If you lock behind a paywall things previously available for free, sure. And they'll be right too. An other option is to add features which are only behind a new paywall. Issue then is providing additional services of value and a way for users to discover them.

Just as a case study, Reddit did exactly that, and their users flipped out . Reddit ended up doing OK with it -- they've made at least enough from it to be able to afford some infrastructure upgrades and at least one new hire -- but there was a pretty vocal not-small group of users that were unhappy about it.

The initial response was to flip out, but once people realized reddit wasn't going to switch to a pay-only site the outrage died down. It might have only worked because reddit users/admins try so hard to foster a sense of community, but it seemed to me like reddit showed how to set up a pay service correctly, and people were just too jaded because of sites like Scribd to realize it.

Re: Scribd Puts My Old Uploads Behind a Paywall and Goes Onto My Shitlist

#36

Post by state_machine »

BrandonM wrote: post #24
storm wrote: post #7

I've never seen the appeal of Scribd, and I'm no fan of the direction they seem to be stumbling in, but it seems a bit unfair to dismiss invitations to join a user advisory board and/or come visit them as "not much of a response". Even if both are mere PR exercises, it's an improvement on the kind of content-free hand waving I'd expect from a company desperately seeking profitability.

Exactly. How can he call this "not much of a response?" As you pointed out, the message said, "I'd also like to extend an open invitation for you to come in and meet the team." To me, that sounds like a free trip to give direct user feedback and have a real chance to make a positive change. Instead, it sounds like Mr. Goldman just wants to bitch. He feels like Scribd used him? Did he not use Scribd? At least Scribd p…

Well, it's "not much of a response" since it doesn't respond to his concerns. Inviting him to give further feedback is great and all, but while it acknowledged his issues with the Archive paywall (just by saying they could tune it -- not with a concrete solution), it completely ignored his privacy complaint about broadcasting reading activity.

Basically, it was a response, but "not much" of one.

Re: Scribd Puts My Old Uploads Behind a Paywall and Goes Onto My Shitlist

#37

Post by jacoblyles »

Early Scribd broke the web by taking open format documents, putting them in a proprietary wrapper, and calling it a "service".

Middle Scribd fixed their own brokenness by moving to HTML 5 (which is sometimes more convenient than a PDF, and is certainly "open" and accessible).

Late Scribd is again breaking the web by moving documents behind a paywall. Some qualities are just baked into a company's DNA.

Re: Scribd Puts My Old Uploads Behind a Paywall and Goes Onto My Shitlist

#38

Post by pts101 »

_delirium wrote: post #31
narkee wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>3. For Mac users, where PDFs don't load in a plugin in the browser by default, they want to be able to link to a PDF that opens in the browser instead of popping up an external viewer. FYI, PDFs absolutely load in the browser by default.

Hmm, is that only for Safari? On my OSX machine, Firefox pops up PDFs in an external instance of Preview by default. Presumably I could install the Acrobat plugin, but it doesn't seem to come with it, or to be able to find one already installed on the system. But if Safari does show them inline, then I agree I was wrong about the "default" behavior, since Safari is the default browser.

They show up inline in Safari and Chrome.

If you switch to Firefox, you can install the PDF Plugin to have a non-retarded PDF experience without Acrobat.

Re: Scribd Puts My Old Uploads Behind a Paywall and Goes Onto My Shitlist

#39

Post by gammarator »

_delirium wrote: post #31
narkee wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>3. For Mac users, where PDFs don't load in a plugin in the browser by default, they want to be able to link to a PDF that opens in the browser instead of popping up an external viewer. FYI, PDFs absolutely load in the browser by default.

Hmm, is that only for Safari? On my OSX machine, Firefox pops up PDFs in an external instance of Preview by default. Presumably I could install the Acrobat plugin, but it doesn't seem to come with it, or to be able to find one already installed on the system. But if Safari does show them inline, then I agree I was wrong about the "default" behavior, since Safari is the default browser.

Better: use this plugin: http://code.google.com/p/firefox-mac-pdf/

It uses the native Quartz PDFKit backend.

Re: Scribd Puts My Old Uploads Behind a Paywall and Goes Onto My Shitlist

#40

Post by ryanelkins »

ajscherer wrote: post #22
ulf wrote: post #3

Sometimes, when reading pieces like this, I think it is time that we as internet users reach a certain point in our understanding of entitlement. There are so many services we readily use, most free of charge, while some of them provide a huge service to us. Some even make us money. But if the service providers themselves try to validate their business by making money out of it in some way, we start bitching... I do…

I would flip that around on you: I think it is time that companies reach a point in their understanding of users' reaction to the bait & switch. The value of your service to a user isn't going to increase simply due to the passage of time or growth of your site. If they wouldn't pay for it on day 1, the odds are they won't pay for it after 2 years of using the service. If, in the process of trying to monetize your se…

I want to give Scribd the benefit of the doubt. I don't really see this as malicious as much as a business decisions that was misinterpreted.

It was probably something like this: People upload a lot of stuff to their service. Once content goes "stale" no one is viewing it anymore, but they are still storing it. They decided they could either remove the material to make room for new stuff or monetize the old material in a way that justified keeping it around.

The cost of storage is pretty low so maybe I'm reaching a bit here on their behalf. I have no idea what sort of scale they are at. Perhaps I just like to believe that people aren't trying to be evil.

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