- Scribd has acquired presentation sharing service Slideshare from LinkedIn which acquired it in 2012 and the amount of the deal is yet to be disclosed
Scribd has acquired presentation sharing service Slideshare from LinkedIn which acquired it in 2012 and the amount of the deal is yet to be disclosed
Scribd will take over the SlideShare sector on 24 September, according to LinkedIn.
Trip Adler CEO Trip Scribd reported that the two businesses have somewhat similar origins, both of which were founded in 2006/2007 and both centered on the exchange of information and documents.
“There were many kinds of like-missions in the two brands,” said Adler. The difference was that [SlideShare] concentrated more on PowerPoint presentations and users while concentrating was on the general customer with more PDFs and Word materials and written content.”
The business diverged even further over time, with SlideShare purchased from LinkedIn in 2012 and LinkedIn purchased from Microsoft itself in 2016.
In between, Scribd introduced a subscription service in the Netflix style for e-books and audiobooks, but Adler claimed that the “consumer side” and the “premium one” continue to be essential to the company.
“We get people to check for papers, then pay for our premium content,” he said. “But they keep reading papers as well.”
Adler thus saw an opportunity to greatly broaden the product’s document side, integrating SlideShare’s 40 million presentations content library and its 100 million single-month visitors audience when Microsoft and LinkedIn approached Scribd about acquiring Slideshare.
The contract, Adler said, is essentially about getting in the “information and audience” of SlideShare, although he said Scribd might also integrate aspects of the service technologies. Alternatively, the existing team takes over SlideShare ‘s service. Scribd will not consider new employees as part of the contract.
He added that SlideShare will remain as a single, Scribd-separate service and that he hopes that LinkedIn will continue to function well.
“For the first few months, nothing will change,” said Adler. “For a product like this, both the technical stack and the users who upload content, we have considerable experience.
In the meantime, LinkedIn Vice President of Technology Chris Pruett ‘s comment underlined the research that SlideShare has done since the company acquired:
Around a time when it became clear that professionals used LinkedIn for more purposes than technical interfaces, in May 2012 LinkedIn purchased SlideShare. The SlideShare team, product, and community have influenced the user experience on LinkedIn over the last eight years. The ability to download, distribute, and address LinkedIn materials has been included.
