Scribd goes mobile

Enabling its users to read on Kindles, E-readers and a bunch of smartphones including iPhone

Scribd, which develops an online, cloud-based platform for reading and sharing documents, announced a big step today - it's going mobile.

The startup which calls itself the largest social publishing company in the world, launched two new products today in hopes to simplify mobile reading.    

It calls the first one, the send-to-device reading feature.  In a nutshell, the feature lets you send DRM free Scribd documents to mobile devices like Amazon's Kindle, the Sony Reader, Barnes and Noble's Nook.  It's also geared towards smartphones and is able to work with Android, iPhone, BlackBerry and Palm.  

So say you're reading a document over on the Scribd site and want to take it with you on the go.  You click the 'mobile' button, pick a device you want to read the document on, in my case, I picked my iPhone which I was asked to enter my phone number, and Scribd immediately sent me a text with my smartphone-optimized document.  Pretty simple and sweet.

The company also made public a series of APIs its coined, 'the Scribd Open Content Platform for E-Readeres and Mobile Devices' (SOPED).  In short, the APIs enables devices companies the ability to integrate Scribd search, social and other functionality into their device.  Scribd said Interead and Onyx International have both signed up for SOPED.

It's a smart move for Scribd to be mobile.  After all, we're all reading content on our smartphones now, and soon, plenty of us will be picking up iPads or other tablet devices.  

"Scribd is in a perfect position to become the hub for mobile reading, the place where content creators come to easily publish their works and build a readership and where consumers come to find what they want to read on whatever device they want," said Trip Adler, Scribd CEO and co-founder.

On top of today's announcement, Scribd also shared it would be rolling out a couple apps for the Android and iPhone operating systems which would a bit more complex than what you see on your mobile browser with the send to device feature.  The apps will provide Scribd search, and some of the social features seen on its Website.