Thanks for the well-thought questions. Being as the web is all about content, there are many players and there is plenty of overlap. We do want to create a place where people want to publish their essays, poems, notes, etc.
I too am a developer, and it is sometimes easy to get caught up in the technological aspects of interesting projects such as this, our latest. I do feel, however, that we have/are creating a platform people want to use.
Here's an anecdote about some value I feel we began providing recently: I got to work on a little project we called Readcasting a few weeks ago. It basically allows people to passively or actively share what they are reading. A day or so ago, one of the ladies in marketing circulated an article[1] about how the social aspects of Scribd (to a large extent Readcasting) has helped an author gain a great deal of exposure. I thought that was pretty nice to hear. It's always a pleasure to see that people use and like the things you build, but it also pointed directly at the purpose of Scribd - to create a platform that benefits the people who publish on it.
You know what, you guys should collect these social proof points and feature them prominently on your first page. So that content creators visiting Scribd for the first time can immediately understand the value proposition right away. This link is a perfect proof point - and priceless, because for the sheer fact that it wasn't written by Scribd itself. You can write anything about yourself, but it's what other people write about you that matters.
Your brand is what other people say it is ;) You guys should leverage such proof points more in your marketing effort.
I too am a developer, and it is sometimes easy to get caught up in the technological aspects of interesting projects such as this, our latest. I do feel, however, that we have/are creating a platform people want to use.
Here's an anecdote about some value I feel we began providing recently: I got to work on a little project we called Readcasting a few weeks ago. It basically allows people to passively or actively share what they are reading. A day or so ago, one of the ladies in marketing circulated an article[1] about how the social aspects of Scribd (to a large extent Readcasting) has helped an author gain a great deal of exposure. I thought that was pretty nice to hear. It's always a pleasure to see that people use and like the things you build, but it also pointed directly at the purpose of Scribd - to create a platform that benefits the people who publish on it.
1. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kate-rados/where-marketing-mis...