Some twenty months ago I contributed* two documents to scribd. I browsed around but did not download anything. Today I browsed around again, noticed a heap of banner ads — perhaps too many for my tastes — but hey, you’ve got to pay the bills somehow, right? But then I tried a download and hit a pay wall: Either contribute a new document or pay a monthly $9 subscription. Really? What did I get in return for the two I already uploaded?
Scribd won’t let me download a document without paying a subscription or contributing a new one.
Frustrated with scribd I recalled my docs from their archives and deleted them. I did not want others to have to pay for what I had intended they could download for free. Then I tried another download and guess what? This time I got a single download without the pay wall going up. So I tried another. No go.
How crazy is that? I take my contributions back and get a free download? Who dreamed up this self-defeating business model? I hope it fails fast so that something can replace it. Scribd is dead to me now …
*What did I contribute to scribd: A pair of enigmatic maps which hold precise coordinates to … something. The maps had to be downloaded, printed and assembled. While not the most popular docs in scribd, they were intentionally obscured for an alternate reality game — but they were discovered nearly 300 times.
