SlideShare is an American

hosting service An Internet hosting service is a service that runs servers connected to the Internet, allowing organizations and individuals to serve content or host services connected to the Internet. A common kind of hosting is web hosting. Most hosting provi ...

, now owned by Scribd, for professional content including presentations, infographics, documents, and videos. Users can upload files privately or publicly in

PowerPoint Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program, created by Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin at a software company named Forethought, Inc. It was released on April 20, 1987, initially for Macintosh computers only. Microsoft acquired PowerPo ...

Word A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no conse ...

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems ...

, or

OpenDocument The Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF), also known as OpenDocument, is an open file format for word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations and graphics and using ZIP-compressed XML files. It was developed ...

format. Content can then be viewed on the site itself, on mobile devices or embedded on other sites. SlideShare also provides users the ability to rate, comment on, and share the uploaded content. Launched on October 4, 2006, the service positioned itself to be similar to

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second most ...

, but for presentations. The company was acquired by LinkedIn in 2012, and then by Scribd in 2020. In 2018, it was estimated that the website gets an estimated 80 million unique visitors a month. SlideShare's biggest competitors include Zoho.com,

Issuu Issuu, Inc. (pronounced "issue") is a Danish-founded American electronic publishing platform based in Palo Alto, California, United States. Founded in 2004 as a Danish startup, the company moved its headquarters to the United States in 2013. ...

and edocr.

History

SlideShare was officially launched on October 4, 2006. Rashmi Sinha, the

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especiall ...

and

co-founder An organizational founder is a person who has undertaken some or all of the formational work needed to create a new organization, whether it is a business, a charitable organization, a governing body, a school, a group of entertainers, or any othe ...

of SlideShare was named amongst the world's Top 10 Women Influencers in Web 2.0 by FastCompany. Jonathan Boutelle was the CTO of SlideShare and came up with the initial idea behind the website. He wrote the first version of the site. The website was originally meant to be used for businesses to share slides, but it expanded to become a host of many slides that are uploaded merely to entertain. On May 3, 2012, SlideShare announced that it was to be acquired by

LinkedIn LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented online service that operates via websites and mobile apps. Launched on May 5, 2003, the platform is primarily used for professional networking and career development, and allows job se ...

. It is reported that the deal was $118.75 million. On August 11, 2020, it was reported that Scribd, Inc. acquired Slideshare from

for an undisclosed amount. Scribd took over the operations on September 24, 2020.

Slidecast

On July 24, 2007 Slideshare introduced a format called " SlideCast" to "make web multimedia using only a ppt file and an mp3". According to Boutelle, the word slidecast is a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsSlide show A slide show (slideshow) is a presentation of a series of still images ( slides) on a projection screen or electronic display device, typically in a prearranged sequence. The changes may be automatic and at regular intervals or they may be manua ...

" and "

podcasting A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing ...

". Slidecasts allowed users with uploaded

, Keynote or

presentations to synchronize them to mp3 audio. The audio synchronization process could be started using the editor's "Edit slidecast" link. On February 7, 2014, less than a year after its acquisition by LinkedIn Corporation, Slideshare announced that Slidecast will be shut down on April 30, 2014.

Zipcasts

In February 2011 SlideShare added a feature called Zipcasts. A Zipcast was a social web conferencing system that allows presenters to broadcast an audio/video feed while driving the presentation through the Internet. Zipcasts also allowed users to communicate during the presentation via an inbuilt chat function.

References

External links

* {{Presentation software LinkedIn Internet technology companies of the United States Presentation software Multilingual websites Internet properties established in 2006 2012 mergers and acquisitions 2020 mergers and acquisitions

History

Slidecast

Zipcasts

See also

References

External links