Not only will millions of SlideShare uploads embedded across the Web now render effortlessly on iPhones and iPads, but the company also launched a new mobile site that renders nicely on smartphones and tablets as well. The upgrade should also make the site and its embeds load faster, since they don't rely on clunky Flash plugins and content to render.

In the presentation-sharing space, SlideShare's closest competitor is probably Scribd, which has its own native iOS app called Float rather than a mobile-friendly Web app. Their website renders on the iPad, but tapping on a presentation results in a prompt to download a PDF rather than displaying it natively in the browser.

The change has the added advantage of allowing SlideShare to sell premium subscriptions to its service without having to pay 30% of that revenue to Apple.

Zoho Show 2.0 is a presentation creation service from Zoho, the makers of a host of online productivity and collaboration apps. Zoho Show does a fantastic job of featuring the best and most necessary features for creating presentations on the fly. There are a plethora of themes available to get you started and many options for customizing your presentations including Master Styles for Master slides, clipart, and Zoho Chat integration. Check out our more in-depth review of the service here.

Google Docs

If you're a user of the Google Docs online service you can use the service to create presentations on the fly. While there are theme and insert options available for both images and videos, you'll have a tougher time than most of the other pics due to Google's simplistic style. There are not many options available and the ones that are have quite a few limitations that other services don't.

280 Slides

280 Slides is a pretty neat online presentation alternative. Fresh out of private beta, 280 Slides still has some growing up to do. There are not a lot of theme options to choose from nor can you upload your own theme images. On the other hand, you can search for media to add using Flickr and Youtube right from 280 slides, and download your presentations in the PowerPoint 2007 format.

SlideRocket

SlideRocket is an amazing presentation creator and arguably the best of the bunch. I'm not going to say any more than that and instead direct you to our review of SlideRocket and the SlideRocket product tour.

Which Would You Choose?

Other great online presentation creators include PreZentit, Empressr, and Preezo. These are all fantastic presentation creators and though many require a sign up, they all offer the basics and a little more for creating excellent presentations. With a host of services to choose from, what is your favorite online presentation creator?

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?