Great example of pivoting. (As Chris Dixon said: "Ask yourself: if you started over today, would you build the same product?" http://cdixon.org/2010/06/14/pivoting/)
Another tidbit I found interesting:
Now that the company has its HTML5 and iPad strategy in place, Adler says they are focusing on making Scribd more social and less reliant on search engines. Today, the majority of their traffic comes from Google, but Scribd is putting a greater emphasis on the social by closely integrating with Facebook.
If Facebook (rather than search) becomes the principal way that people find content online, that could spell big trouble for Google.
I suspect that a business/pleasure line will be drawn. Social networks tend to lead you towards entertaining content, where as people turn to Google for both entertainment and critical path content. In reality, I doubt that social mechanisms will do anything more than continue to boost Google traffic.
In this case, Scribd is baking a bigger pie. I doubt either Google or Facebook need to concern themselves with arguing over the size of the slices for this one.
Another tidbit I found interesting:
Now that the company has its HTML5 and iPad strategy in place, Adler says they are focusing on making Scribd more social and less reliant on search engines. Today, the majority of their traffic comes from Google, but Scribd is putting a greater emphasis on the social by closely integrating with Facebook.
If Facebook (rather than search) becomes the principal way that people find content online, that could spell big trouble for Google.