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By Rob Garretson
A document-hosting service that bills its offering as "social publishing" has announced a series of mobile services and tools for sending books and other documents to any portable device, an apparent attempt to circumvent the format wars in the emerging market for e-readers.
Scribd -- which lets users post and read both professionally published and unpublished amateur content, claiming a repository of 10 million documents and 50 million readers per month -- plans a new "send to mobile" feature on its Web site that will allow users to access its content from e-readers such as Amazon's Kindle, Sony Readers and Barnes & Noble's Nook. The company, renowned for its easy-to-use document reader, also plans to launch mobile apps for the iPhone, Android and iPad within the next few months, according to CEO Trip Adler.
The new features and planned apps, along with a new set of open APIs Scribd plans to publish, are aimed at creating a universal adaptor for e-readers, expanding access to millions of written works on any mobile device.
Last year, Scribd scored partnerships with a number of major publishers, including Random House, Simon & Schuster, Workman Publishing Co., Berrett-Koehler, Thomas Nelson and Manning Publications. Like Amazon, Scribd charges a default price of $9.99 for electronic copies of books, though authors and publishers are free to set their own prices on the service, which also includes voluminous free content uploaded by users. The company recently earned the No. 6 spot on the 2010 list of Most Innovative Media Companies published by Fast Company magazine, which describes it as "Somewhere between Google Books, Amazon and the blogosphere."
In addition to the new feature and apps for sending Scribd-hosted content to mobile devices, the company plans a development platform and set of application programming interfaces called the Scribd Open Platform for E-Readers (SOPED), which lets device manufacturers integrate Scribd's search, social networking and other capabilities into their devices. Interead and Onyx International have already reportedly signed on.
Scribd's attempt to make its content available on virtually any device sidesteps the e-reader format wars and gives it a cut of the publishing revenue regardless of whether dedicated e-readers, smartphones, tablet PCs or another emerging genre of device proves most popular for consuming written content digitally. The move follows Amazon's attempt to open its Kindle service up to smartphones, including the iPhone and most recently BlackBerry.
The send-to-device feature adds a "Mobile" button on every DRM-free document Scribd offers, which provides the option of sending the document via SMS or e-mail to a network-connected device or, on the Kindle, through e-mail or downloaded via a USB port.
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