Social publishing company Scribd has launched a free version of its document reader for select media companies and blogs.
Companies involved in the initial launch include The New York Times, Los Angles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Huffington Post and Mediabistro.
The new Scribd reader includes a Scribd watermark and allows media companies to embed source materials such as court filings and memos in articles. Scribd says its reader will increase people’s time on a site and extend brands across the Internet. More than five million Scribd readers have been embedded online.
“The concept of news and journalism is quickly evolving,” said Trip Adler, CEO and co-founder of Scribd.
“With this launch, Scribd is giving news organizations a way to present their source material as an important part of the story, both on and off their websites.”
The newly designed embeddable document reader turns almost all file types including PDF, Word and PowerPoint into a Web document that can be shared on Scribd and any website that allows embeds.
Sribd says its document reader can help news agencies:
- Embed documents in news stories while adding transparency to the reporting process
- Increase people’s time spent reading each story
- Increase brand recognition through logos displayed on the reader
- Retain attribution for original document uploads
- Increase traffic via links back to the original story
- Increase distribution of the source material and brand across the web
Features include in-browser search, zoom and full screen/custom resizing options, as well as the ability to share on Facebook, and Twitter.
