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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

#91

Post by miles »

rick888 wrote: post #30
ajscherer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"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. " Yes it will. If that user uses your service every day, over time, it will be more valuable to them. Most services also don't just stay the same over time. More features are added and bugs are fixed, which adds to the value. "If they wouldn't pay for it on day 1, the odds are they won't pay for it a…

any companies have tried the freemium model and then realize that it can't scale (IE: the costs to support this free user base out weighs the benefits).

It has scaled wonderfully for Evernote:

"From the start, Libin modeled Evernote to be profitable at a 1% conversion rate ... Right now, roughly 2% of all Evernoters are premium customers ... Libin wants to maintain that rate at 5% or less. If people start converting en masse, 'that means our free product isn't good enough,' he says."

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/147/next-tech-remember-t...

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

#92

Post by sscheper »

That paywall pays for hosting, the platform and the tools that guy used--not to mention the fact that it also pays for hundreds of jobs and fuels the entrepreneurial economy. If that causes a benign blogger to add the service to his or her shitlist, then I think Scribd will live on.

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

#94

Post by masklinn »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #67
30thElement wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> ...once people realized reddit wasn't going to switch to a pay-only site the outrage died down. I'm not very active in Reddit anymore -- HN is my last distraction now -- but I did watch that situation carefully because it was interesting. I got the sense that the outrage died down only because Reddit promised to migrate its paid features into the "free" arena. Until then, a lot of people were angry that there was g…

> I got the sense that the outrage died down only because Reddit promised to migrate its paid features into the "free" arena. Until then, a lot of people were angry that there was going to be some kind of "elite" class on the site.

As a Charter and gold reddit member... not really. It was well understood early on that most of the "gold" features would be stuff that was too expensive (computationally) to give to everybody (especially before the server upgrade), at least from the start.

The great fear gripping everybody was truly that Reddit would somehow become "for-pay", and that content previously free would now become non-free (a fear which didn't make much sense as the community is the one providing the content, and the admins might not be too media and ad-savvy, but they're not stupid)

> But either way, in that specific case, there would have been some vocal rebellion if the paid-for features stayed locked behind a paywall.

Doubtful. 1000 comments/thread is a nice feature for instance, but it didn't exist (at all) before gold and it's not exactly a deal-breaker.

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

#95

Post by chmike »

nkohari wrote: post #87
daleharvey wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

emailing pdf's is not my definition of "doing fine", I am not following the current drama much, but I do thank scribd for letting me look at content I would have otherwise ignored on seeing ".pdf"

I always thought that Scribd was just a reaction to how awful Adobe's free PDF reader has become.

What is the problem with pdf ? Editing a document in html is too painful.

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

#96

Post by njharman »

Andrew_Quentin wrote: post #64
acqq wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Post "papers of other documents": You can upload them on your free web account (like, Google Sites)? Unless you don't have the right to distribute the documents, they will remain there. Embed: Who really needs embedded PDF? What for? To have it harder to read? Just give me the plain link, thank you. Hosting: See the first paragraph. OK, anybody knows some better reason?

The best reason is really so that people who are not that computer literate, that is most people, like a student who does not know much about computers, but has a file that he owns to share, he can put it on there. If someone is literate sufficiently with the internet to know how easy is to get hosting, and how cheap, then really there is no reason.

This is the fundemental fail of scibd and why ive written them off from the start.

their value depends on users being ignorant.

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

#97

Post by pyre »

chmike wrote: post #95
nkohari wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought that Scribd was just a reaction to how awful Adobe's free PDF reader has become.

What is the problem with pdf ? Editing a document in html is too painful.

What does that quality of Adobe's pdf reader have to do with the ease of editing documents in html or pdf?

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

#98

Post by DJN »

patio11 wrote: post #93

Guys: you could write your next software for people like this gentleman, or you could write it for a 50 year old woman who pays money for software and services. Choose wisely.

Well said. This morale of this story is in line with an old adage - Nothing goes for nothing.

When you don't pay for a service, you shouldn't expect anything in return. A guarantee of perpetual free access has to be paid for somehow and if they are not making money from ads presumably because nobody's seeing or clicking on them, then all bets are off!

You get what you pay for. Next time look for a price tag.

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

#99

Post by papaf »

DJN wrote: post #98
patio11 wrote: post #93

Guys: you could write your next software for people like this gentleman, or you could write it for a 50 year old woman who pays money for software and services. Choose wisely.

Well said. This morale of this story is in line with an old adage - Nothing goes for nothing. When you don't pay for a service, you shouldn't expect anything in return. A guarantee of perpetual free access has to be paid for somehow and if they are not making money from ads presumably because nobody's seeing or clicking on them, then all bets are off! You get what you pay for. Next time look for a price tag.

Except that, historically, the internet has been all about getting something for nothing. This is why were using complex modern web browsers for free to view a site that doesn't charge us.

Also, Scribd would be nothing without the thousands of hours people have spent uploading content without charging Scribd. The situation isn't as clear cut as you make out.

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

#100

Post by Robin_Message »

patio11 wrote: post #93

Guys: you could write your next software for people like this gentleman, or you could write it for a 50 year old woman who pays money for software and services. Choose wisely.

Indeed. I also thought the following comment from Scribd showed what is wrong with their mindset:

  As a start-up, we're constantly trying to strike the right
  balance: building products that people love but that also
  help us make money (to cover server cost and everything
  else associated with running a company).
Umm, surely as a company you are trying to do more than cover your running costs? Or are the saying "As a start-up" profitability is irrelevant and all they care about is covering their costs whilst increasing their market share? A larger share in a market no-one is actually willing to pay for is not worth more than a smaller one, what with them both being worth nothing and all.
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