SlideShare

2020. Scribd acquires presentation-sharing service SlideShare from LinkedIn



SlideShare has a new owner, with LinkedIn selling the presentation-sharing service to Scribd for an undisclosed price. The two products always had kind of similar missions. Only SlideShare focused on more on PowerPoint presentations and business users, while Scribd focused more on PDFs and Word docs and long-form written content, more on the general consumer. SlideShare will continue to operate as a standalone service, separate from Scribd, and will continue to be well-integrated with LinkedIn. LinkedIn acquired SlideShare in May 2012 at a time when it was becoming clear that professionals were using LinkedIn for more than making professional connections.


2014. "YouTube for presentations" - SlideShare is going completely free



SlideShare, the service that allows you to publish presentations online similar to YouTube for video, was acquired by LinkedIn two years ago. Now that LinkedIn is thriving, its executives decided to ditch paid SlideShare accounts to attract more business users. Paid accounts started at $19/month and offered additional features: analytics (presentation views by time, city, site, and LinkedIn user—down to specific names and job titles), the ability to customize your profile in a corporate style, and the ability to post private presentations and restrict access to them to specific people. All these features will gradually roll out to free SlideShare accounts throughout the fall.


2012. LinkedIn acquired Youtube for presentations - SlideShare



LinkedIn, the professional social network #1, is doing fine. During two last quarters LinkedIn manages to double its incomes - already up to $188 million/quarter. And the company is already valued at $10 billion. That's why LinkedIn can afford to buy the new users in bulk - for example, by purchasing online service SlideShare for $119 million. SlideShare works like Youtube - only not for video - but for presentations. And its target audience - are mostly business users (like in LinkedIn). You can upload to SlideShare your PowerPoint presentation and publish it anywhere in the embeddable web-viewer (like yuotube video). Besides SlideShare - is itself an additional marketing channel with a large audience, so by publishing a presentation on it, you can get new customers and partners. Will LinkedIn somehow integrate SlideShare into its network - is not clear yet, but at least they have already embedded LinkedIn presentation on the SlideShare homepage.


2011. SlideShare adds real-time presentation streaming



SlideShare is known primarily as a tool for embedding presentations on any website and as a huge catalog where you can find a presentation on a topic of interest (YouTube for presentations). Now it also has the ability to demonstrate a presentation during an online meeting, in real time (what is called a webinar). The tool for conducting such presentations, called Zipcast, is equipped with a minimal set of functions - one-way video communication (everyone can see the speaker), text chat, a list of attendees, and, of course, a window with the presentation. Voice communication is carried out via a third-party conference number (i.e., for now, only for the bourgeoisie). The number of viewers is unlimited, even in the free version. And they don’t need to install anything - Zipcast runs in a browser using HTML5. The paid version features no ads, analytical tools, and the ability to password-protect your online meeting.


2008. SlideShare = YouTube for presentations



What's YouTube's specialty? Lots of cool videos. But YouTube also makes it easy to upload media files online, embed them anywhere, share them with others, and have them quickly watch the video without waiting downloading. The creators of SlideShare used the same formula for presentations and have already received $3 million in funding. The result is a very popular site where people share their presentations, including for business purposes: adding a presentation to their own website, sending presentations to clients, finding templates and ideas for new presentations, publishing presentations directly for promotion among SlideShare visitors. You can create presentation with images easier than a video, but it can bring in just as many clients through viral marketing.