For an early stage company like Scribd, what exactly is the rationale for funneling resources into a site redesign instead of into developing/expanding features? I mean, this design is an improvement, but the original site wasn't bad at all.
I personally thought the old site was beyond bad. I think for better or worse, a well designed site does matter when attracting new customers. Sure, the service may be the same, but people will be more willing to use it if it has a functional and good looking design.
I haven't logged into Scribd in a while, but strangely when I accessed their website now, it shows me logged-in as some other user. I can see the profile, and all uploaded documents of that user.
I still think that the killer app. for Scribd is converting PDF and flash (and everything else) into plain old, super fast html. Then you would know that every Scribd link loads super fast and doesn't give you anything but clean pure text. Like Google's "view as html" but better.
Looks a lot better, absolutely. Still not my cup of tea (my startup focuses on the more artisan side of writing), but for what it is, this redesign was pretty excellent.
