You’ve probably heard something about Scribd or perhaps even received an invitation to join them in the past. This online application has become a dynamic tool that is being used by many people. Yet, there are still some that are not familiar with it. Consider this a guide to Scribd. It will give you the rundown of what the site offers and tell you want you need to do to join.

Essentially, Scribd is a free social document-sharing website that allows users to upload documents of various formats, and embed them into a web page using its special iPaper format. Users may search, read and publish almost any kind of documents ranging from e-books, presentations, and essays to academic papers, newsletters, photo albums, sheet music, and other notes. Scribd was originally conceived by Trip Adler and Jared Friedman, and co-founded by Tikhon Bernstam in September 2006 and officially launched in March 2007. The site currently has more than 50 million monthly users and more than 50,000 documents are uploaded each day.

Already, just threes later, Scribd spawned an enormous community of enthusiastic readers and publishers who regularly contribute quality content to it. Scribd has grown exponentially; its open library and community generated content growing continuously.

It is fairly established that the main reason site has been a success and garnered such popularity is its iPaper format. The rich document format similar to PDF built for the web allows users to embed documents into a web page. iPaper was built with Adobe Flash, a move which made the formal viewable in all the major operating systems including Windows, Mac OS, and Linux, without conversion, so as long as Flash was installed in the user’s computer. The other advantage of the iPaper format is that it can be changed into PDFs, Word docs, Postscript files, OpenOffice docs, and PowerPoint presentations.

Scribd’s document management system provides security with flexibility. This, also, makes it popular with those users who want to publish varied, restrictive, and private content. While individuals make use of the services, a number of businesses and freelance professionals have used Scribd for hosting their images and portfolios. Multi-media groups and educational publishers use it to share materials with clients and students alike.

Scribd’s users embed their files into outside blogs and websites. This allows them to advertise or market their materials and then link back to Scribd for additional projects or offerings. In order to get information into a viewer’s hands, Scribd provides four different uploading formats and an unlimited storage space. Documents uploaded in Scribd are then indexed on search engines like Google. This helps to build targeted search engine rankings that aid in the growth of readership.

If you want to register for Scribd, the process is not much different than any other website. You click on the sign-up button and are redirected to a registration screen. You’ll be prompted for an e-mail address, a password, and an optional username. After this first step, you’ll be able to fill in the details of your profile or you can also skip it for later. You will receive a confirmation e-mail to complete the registration process. That’s basically it. If you’re ready to check out Scribd, why don’t you do so.

Sean Kilgore writes about how to apply for and take online college classes.