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Posts Tagged ‘issuu’

What is the best reading experience on a touchscreen device? As magazines and tablet-makers grapple with this question for larger form factors, Issuu has an answer for touchscreen phones. The Web-based document-viewer just released Issue Mobile for Android phones, and is working on an iPhone app.

Issuu Mobile is a mobile document reader which gives you access all the magazines, books, and documents uploaded to Issuu. Millions of public documents have been uploaded, just like on Scribd or DocStoc, and you can view your own private documents in your own account as well. The Android app shows featured content and addresses the small screen size with a new EasyRead feature. You just scratch a portion of the text and it pops up in a magnified view. You can also subscribe to publishers and news feeds.

Everything on Issuu is free or promotional right now, but you can find previews and free editions of books from Penguin, Random House and indie magazines. Issuu really needs a store like Scribd’s. But it is creating new mobile reading experiences which everyone can learn from.

I just wonder of down the road you need a separate app, or whether you can get the same reading experience from the Web. For now, Issuu is offering both and, at least for smaller screens, optimizing the experience with an app.

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Issuu, the Danish startup battling the likes of Docstoc and Scribd in the professional document publication and sharing space, is today introducing a REST-based API that enables its users to automatically upload and manage publications, bookmarks, and folders under their accounts.

That means developers and designers can henceforth tap into the Issuu platform and services to equip their own applications and websites with the oft-needed functionality of offering document consultation without the need for end users to download the docs or to visit the Issuu website. Issuu already offered two APIs: one for Search (which allows developers to sift through all Issuu publications, comments, and users) and one for its Viewer product. It is now adding a third one for the ‘Upload’ feature, obviously an essential one.

When Docstoc recently left the beta phase, it also launched with a number of open APIs. I’d check up on Scribd too, but their website is currently down.

Either way, we like Issuu here at TechCrunch. When the company first launched, it was one of the first services of its kind whose interface and functionality didn’t suck. The startup has been busy adding new features to its products and venture capital to its bank account - it raised a total of $6.25 million in funding to date - and is seeing decent traction as well.

According to co-founder Martin Ferro-Thomsen, Issuu currently services over 325 million monthly unique page views across its entire network of publishers (including embeds in articles etc.) and welcomes 4.4 million unique visitors to its main website Issuu.com every month.

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Popular document sharing service DocStoc just launched a collections feature, which lets users package documents around a particular topic. DocStoc has already created close to 50 collections, including “Starting a Small Business,” “Advertising Online,” and “Traveling on a Budget,” and is opening up the platform to users to add to existing collections and create their own.

The feature is just another way to organize your documents online and can be a pretty useful tool to manage large amounts of documents that relate to different topics. Competitors Issuu and Scribd both have similar offerings. Scribd’s “Group” feature allows users to organize documents around a theme and tries to connect users to other people who are interested in the same reading and topics. Issuu recently launched a collaborative Groups feature, where people can collect, organize and discuss publications related to any topic. DocStoc’s feature appears to focus more on the organization of documents around a particular theme than connecting users around that theme.

DocStoc is steadily growing, with 3 million documents uploaded and 1.6 million unique visitors a month in the U.S., according to comScore. (The company’s internal Google Analytics shows 4.8 million unique visitors worldwide). Docstoc recently took off its “beta” label with a homepage redesign, open APIs, and a new revenue-sharing model called DocCash.

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Issuu, a company that lets you upload a PDF or other document and then flip through it easily on a dedicated Webpage or in a small embedded widget, is adding features to its service and site with the aim of becoming a more engaging destination for users. We’re big fans of Issuu—when the company first launched, it was one of the first services of its kind whose interface and functionality didn’t suck. Other popular document sharing services include Docstoc and Scribd.

Issuu says that it’s focusing on adding features to make the the site more of a community for both its free users and enterprise customers. Last year, the startup launched the beta of Issuu Pro, a way for professional publishers to bring their magazines and newspapers to the internet and enhance them with a variety of digital features and the ability to customize the viewing experience. Publications are ad-free (meaning no ads in the viewer from Issuu—any ads in the magazines or documents themselves remain), and publishers were only charged when their content was viewed, with pricing ranging from $1.10 to $19 per 1,000 publication views.

Now, Issuu is taking its enterprise offering out of beta and changing its pricing model to a flat rate of $19 per month for any number of publications and any number of readers. Issuu has also redesigned its homepage for free and enterprise users so that the page gives you information about how your publications are performing including a newsfeed, statistics, and subscribers.

The site has also launched a collaborative Groups feature, where people can collect and discuss publications related to any topic. Anyone can quickly set up a group, style it and then invite friends. You can add publications and/or discussions directly, or by bookmarking a publication while reading it. Groups can be private or public, and about any topic you choose. For example, I found a group called “Travel the World,” which included travel guides.

Issue has enhanced embedding by adding customization and multiple view modes (magazine, presentation, text) and allows a full screen pop-up directly from the embed widget. Each widget now includes a Share menu (think YouTube), where users can share, embed, and explore without leaving the widget. And the site has added a Library feature, a user-friendly manager and publishing tool where you can edit, organize and publish/embed directly from the management platform.

Document sharing services are finding a strong user base and are growing rapidly. Scribd, which also has a community-focus to its user interface, offers the ability to create and join groups. Like Issuu, Scribd has a free service and a premium service for enterprises. According to ComScore’s March numbers, Scribd definitely has the edge over both Issuu and Docstoc, bringing in 12 million unique visitors worldwide in March. Docstoc came in second with 2.89 million unique visitors in March, with Issuu coming in third with 2.4 million unique visitors. However, Issuu’s new interface and features are really visually compelling and easy to use. Scribd is the frontrunner in the race to be the most popular document sharing service, but Issuu and Docstoc keep adding innovative new features. Competition breeds innovation.

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Come July, Atlanta-based Zeevex is going to start selling its Xtreme Online Game Card in more than 20,000 brick-and-mortar retailers in the U.S. thanks to a distribution partnership with InComm, providing a way for gamers to buy virtual currency offline to redeem their online value through the Zeevex website at a later stage. By doing so, users create what Zeevex calls a ‘Digital Locker’, containing so-called Zeev Tokens that can be used for a variety of uses in online video games (e.g., for purchases of Gold or Coins, monthly subscriptions, one-time fees, and micro-transactions).

This is very similar to what PlaySpan is up to with its Ultimate Game Card. For more perspective on their product, read about their recent deal with hi5 or their acquisition of Spare Change.

According to the press release, the Zeevex Digital Lockers will include social network plug-ins (for Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Bebo) so users can trade Zeev Tokens with anyone but also provide parental controls and support for micro-transactions as low as 5 cents.

Zeevex recently closed an undisclosed, private round of funding and is led by Ron Williams (CEO), Dean Gebert (CMO) and Robert Sanders (CTO). While the company would not go into detail on the financing round, it did say its seed round valuation was seven figures and that they are considering a VC-backed Series A round this Summer.

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