Slideshare Ramping Up - Leading Online Presentations App?
Slideshare is growing and may even have become the leading pure play online presentations app [Update: Zoli Erdos points out in the comments that Slideshare doesn't allow you to create online presentations, only share them - which is a key point that I forgot to mention initially]. Two years ago I lamented the shortage of 'online powerpoint' services and noted that it was a product category "up for grabs" in the Web Office market. But now it is flourishing - Web Office leaders Google and Zoho both have good online slideshow offerings and there is no shortage of other startups doing it. But Slideshare is the service that is grabbing attention, perhaps due to its focus on sharing and community.
Both Marshall and I have picked up on its popularity in recent weeks. And judging by the amount of Slideshare embedded presentations in blogs that I've come across lately, we're not the only ones. Let's take a closer look at Slideshare's rise...
Firstly Compete's data shows that Slideshare has been ramping up:
I have to note though that Scribd, which allows you to upload any type of document (not just presentations), is also ramping up according to Compete. The following chart shows that Scribd is far more popular than Slideshare:
Nevertheless there's no doubt that Slideshare is growing. I would guess that it is the leading pure play online presentations app - but please leave a comment if you think otherwise.
What impresses me about Slideshare is that it has a thriving community. I uploaded my Media08 presentation, Web Technology Trends for 2008 and Beyond, to Slideshare (link) a couple of weeks ago and within days it had thousands of views and some comments. As of today it has been favorited 49 times and embedded (in other blogs etc) 67 times. I also noticed many people friending me via Slideshare. This tells me the community at Slideshare is vibrant and they enjoy viewing and discussing slideshows.
Slideshare has some neat features: tags, ability to post to various sites such as Facebook and Blogger.com, good privacy options, transcription of the slideshows, widgets, and more.
The Groups feature is something that could be utilised by a lot of people. For example the XMediaLab group nicely rounds up all of the presentations from the recent Media08 event that I presented at. So if you weren't in Sydney to attend that event, you can at least browse through all of the presentations (and if new media is your thing, it's well worth your time!).
Individuals can also make use of Slideshare to store all of their public presentations - check out Dave McClure's large collection for example.
If you needed any more proof that Slideshare rocks, they also have an API - check out SlideShare Karaoke, which ProgrammeableWeb describes as "a PowerPoint mixer to select a PowerPoint presentation on the fly from SlideShare".
Slideshare isn't perfect, e.g. it currently doesn't convert from Mac Keynote. It may not even have the biggest store of online slideshows - Google, Zoho, Scribd are just a few competitors that potentially have more. Also let's not forget (as I almost did!) that Slideshare is a slideshow sharing app, not a creation one like many of the others. But even given all of that, Slideshare looks to have tipped amongst the hip web 2.0 crowd; and more importantly it has built up its own community of presentation-lovers.
What app(s) do you use for online presentations?
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Richard, I think it's confusing to call it "the leading pure play online presentations app".
It may very well be the leading app for sharing presentations, but you can't create presentations here, only upload ones created elsewhere.
Comparing it to Zoho and Google, which are all about collaboratively creating and updating presentations is really comparing apples and oranges.
Posted by: Zoli Erdos | March 17, 2008 7:14 PM
Zoli, that's an excellent and key point that I somehow neglected to mention in the initial post. I've now updated it to include that vital piece of info. Thanks, R
Posted by: Richard MacManus
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March 17, 2008 8:31 PM
Zoli is an advisor to Zoho, and I am to Slideshare, so I might as well make this point. One is an app, one is a community. Discuss amongst yourselves.
Posted by: Ross Mayfield | March 17, 2008 9:41 PM
adding to the above, slideshare is the youtube/flickr for online ppt & presentations; zoho/googlesdocs are the Office online equivalents. Scribd (which I'm also impressed with, espec. ePaper) seems more about consumer docs sharing (Facebook for docs?); SlideShare more about professional presentations (LinkedIn for presos?).
anyway, they're both awesome... so much so that like Ross I became a SlideShare advisor... and angel investor. I've been a fanatic for the product for over a year, and it just keeps getting better & better. I've used SlideShare to host presentations for several conferences I organize, and it makes it simple to share with attendees & other online audience / community. and the embed features work great to not jus host but also display & view on blogs, profiles, sites etc.
i'm also contnually amazed at the organic traffic you can pickup from just posting new presos -- in fact charlene li's presentations from the past two Graphing Social Patterns confs generated over 10k views in under a week. several of my own ppts on Startup Metrics have gotten a few thousand views.
anyway I could go on & on but suffice it to say it's one of the most useful business productivity tools / sites that I use regularly. not just pimping here because im an investor -- really I'm a huge fan cuz it rocks. SlideShare is friggin' Awesome.
nuff said.
Posted by: dave mcclure | March 18, 2008 3:55 AM
Interesting point. There is one presentation only competitor that you could have looked into as well Authorstream That has some advantages over slideshare, eg. it can handle slide transition better and multimedia. However linking from Authorstream presentations to websites is lousy.
So even within the presentations only, there is some competition starting.
Posted by: WoW!ter | March 18, 2008 6:41 AM
It seems that SlideRocket may have been overlooked. Sure beats the pants off anything else I've seen for creating presentations online.
Posted by: thinman | March 18, 2008 10:14 AM
Slideshare rocks! We have instructors using it at our online teaching and learning site http://www.podclass.com/ as part of their content and it integrates perfectly. Much better than any other similar tool we've tried.
And having the Slideshare API will make integrating it into our platform much easier, although we haven't actually done it yet. It's on our long list of things to-do.
Posted by: Gary Gil | March 18, 2008 12:18 PM
Check out this blog. It allows bloggers to embed slideshows.
Has preety cool collection.
http://slideshows.nachofoto.com/
Posted by: Anuj | March 19, 2008 12:08 PM
What about the PowerPoints with the narrations and animations. Slideshare makes them mere look like Photo slideshows....
I think you have missed the one authorSTREAM. You can upload the PowerPoints with the narrations ,rehearse timings and animations and create flash replica... there.
Its great tool for the teachers community, instructors, advertising industry... to create presentations with audio and animation effects .. Upload on authorSTREAM ... Get the Embed tag... and use that on their own website.. So simple to get the flash replica of PowerPoint.
Posted by: Sushil | March 25, 2008 2:02 AM
authorSTREAM now provides video for IPod and Youtube too.What more you need :). So now upload your presentations and get Video of your presentation for free .
Posted by: dinesh | March 31, 2008 4:16 AM