slideshare

Meet Thirst, Shift Happens, Footnotes & Panipuri

by on September 12, 2012

Some name it after mountains, planets or Greek Gods. Others run contests or scout community forums to harness the wisdom of the crowds.

What are we talking here – its conference room names. But at SlideShare we didn’t have to look far to solve this problem.

At Delhi, SlideShare recently moved into a larger office that has four conference rooms. Our hunt for their names started with wacky/weird options. And then in a Eureka moment it occurred to us – why not name them after some of our SlideShare decks that have achieved iconic status. What better way to recognize these immensely popular, evergreen decks (and their creators) than this. The result is below… (all four decks are previous winners of SlideShare World’s Best Presentation Contests)

Footnotes is our biggest conf room – it can seat 20 people, has large French windows, overlooks a small green lawn and is the lifeblood of our Delhi-San Francisco team meetings. Shift Happens and Panipuri are two smaller conf rooms located near the reception area- mostly for visitors, admin folks etc. And Thirst is a small conf room that the engineers crowd around all day long (its near the engineers bay).

If you are passing by Delhi, you’re invited to the SlideShare office. We’ll show you around the rooms.

BigFoot has landed: a brand new design for our presentation pages

by on November 30, 2011

At SlideShare, we want to help you improve the way you communicate and share your ideas. The “presentation page” (the page you see when you look at a presentation) is the main page for sharing your ideas via SlideShare, and we want the focus of that page to be your content.

We’ve redesigned the presentation page to make it cleaner, and increased the footprint size of your presentations. Someone on the team nick-named the new design “Bigfoot” and the name stuck!

Screenshot of BigFoot presentation design

  • With Bigfoot, you’ll be viewing presentations (and documents, videos, webinars) in an engaging, darkened theater that focuses attention on the content.
  • Discover presentations related to what you’re viewing.
  • Sharing with your friends on SlideShare, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn is a lot easier.
  • Find stats and more about the presentation, all in one place.

All of the features you’re used to, like sharing on social networks, embedding, and displaying number of views are still on your presentation pages. They’re all just easier to see while still keeping your presentation as the center attraction.

Want to try it? Go to any presentation and click on the link in the yellow banner at the top of the page. Or go directly to the Bigfoot page and opt-in. You can always switch back to the old design from the same opt-in page.

As always, we’re listening. So tell us what you think. Whether you’ve got bouquets or brick and bats, send them our way!

10 ways to use Zipcast

by on February 17, 2011

Yesterday, we launched Zipcasts – a fast, simple and social way to host web meetings. Everyone with a SlideShare account can host a Zipcast, or check into Zipcasts that others are hosting.

Here are our 10 favorite ways to use Zipcasts. We are sure you will think of a million other ways to use Zipcasts.

1.            Share ideas with colleagues: You want to share an idea with colleagues e.g., you want to share product specs with remote colleagues. Or you want to just share a presentation that you saw on SlideShare e.g., Mary Meekers’s latest mobile projections. Just start up a private Zipcast and invite your colleagues by giving them the link over IM.

2.            Launch your next product using Zipcast: You are a startup with no marketing budget – but you know how to build buzz on Twitter and Facebook. Start a Zipcast (or informal webinar) about your technology that will change the world. Ask friends, users, anyone you can to join in using Facebook and soon you will have a gathering that is growing virally.

3.      Give a remote talk at a conference: You have been invited to Australia but don’t have 5 days to make the trip. We know you want to visit Melbourne, but sometimes, you just can’t make it. But you can sit at your desk, or even on your couch, and do the talk (make sure to ask the conference to project you on a large screen).

4.            Teach anyone, anywhere: Are you a professor and want to do a lecture remotely to your students while travelling? Zipcast can let you engage your students without cost or complexity. Plus, your students already have Facebook logins.

5.            Pitch a client: Are you a design, marketing firm and want to pitch a potential client on a project proposal? Invite the client team to your meeting room and present your idea to them. Invite your whole team on your end, so that the client does not just get to hear the proposal, but meets the people who will work on it via video.

6.            Walk people over your sales deck – build trust by using video: You are a sales person looking to walk a prospect over your sales deck. Give them a link to your Zipcast room and get straight to pitching (don’t waste time downloading the meeting software).

7.            Support your customers: While on the phone, simply give your customers the link to your meeting room and talk them through the problem. Show them presentations, or drop links to documents or videos on SlideShare in the Zipcast chat. Consider keeping your meeting room open during support hours for customers to join in.

8.            Run a non-profit fund raiser using Zipcast: You are a non-profit looking to raise funds for the next year. You have already put your pitch deck on SlideShare. Next time you are on the phone with a potential donor, invite them to your SlideShare meeting room. Walk them over your deck.

9.            Share your trip photo album with your friends: You went on vacation to Italy and took a lot of pictures of historical buildings. Now you want to share with your friend who is interested in architecture. Start a Zipcast to share and discuss these pictures with your friend.

10.         Do PowerPoint Karoake with your friends: Zipcast is not just all work. It can be used for fun things like PowerPoint Karaoke when you choose a random presentation and someone who has never seen that deck before presents it. It can be a fun way to spend an evening. Imagine your friends improvising through the deck that Colin Powell used to justify the Iraq war!
With Zipcast, you can choose a random slide deck on SlideShare and have your friend present to it. Then it’s your turn and they get to choose the slide deck!

We can’t wait to see what you will do with Zipcasts. Leave comments about how you are using it.

Go to the Zipcast page to check out current Zipcasts or press the Zipcast button on any SlideShare presentation to get started.

Announcing Zipcast – changing the way the world conducts web meetings

by on February 16, 2011

Four years ago, we launched SlideShare and defined the way you share presentations on the web. SlideShare was the first site to let users share PowerPoint and Keynote files on the web, and the SlideShare player has impacted everyone who has come since.

Today we are launching something equally ambitious — we want to redefine web meetings and make them as simple and easy to use as SlideShare itself.

Have you ever wished you could jump into an online meeting from anywhere? Or start meetings instantly? Now you can. No need to download software or wait five minutes for a meeting to start. Open your browser and with one click you’re in a Zipcast meeting!

Zipcast is a simple, fast and social web conferencing system, where the experience is entirely browser-based.

What’s different about Zipcast?

  1. No downloads for anyone. Ever.
  2. Works on any modern browser. Mac users – you will not have your typical struggle with web meeting software.
  3. Everyone gets a personalized meeting room – if you have a SlideShare login, you already have one at http://www.slideshare.net/USERNAME/meeting. Or you can sign up for your free meeting room.
  4. Zipcast meetings are interactive and social and take place entirely within a browser window. Unlike other online meeting systems, no clunky screen takeover is required – you can keep other browser tabs open.
  5. You can see the video (and hear audio) of the presenter who is also driving the slides. Everyone can chat.
  6. Every public presentation on SlideShare now has a Zipcast button – meaning you can start a quick meeting with any presentation on SlideShare. You don’t need to upload to SlideShare to start a meeting!
  7. There is no limit to meeting size. You can meet with one person or 5000 of your best friends!
  8. You can invite people to a Zipcast by giving them the meeting room URL via IM, email, Facebook, or Twitter.
  9. A public Zipcast can go viral – you can share chats can be shared on Twitter or Facebook, which will cause other people to join in.
  10. Activity from all public Zipcasts gets aggregated into an activitiy feed here - keep a watch for interesting upcoming Zipcasts.

The pricing is simple – every SlideShare user has access to Zipcast for free for conducting public meetings. All Pro users get additional functionality like (a) ad removal, (b) private, password-protected meetings accessible only to people invited by the host and (c) audio conferencing.

Zipcast is going to be a in Beta for the next few months. What that means is that we will be watching how you use it, and listening to what to what you think of it. Since this is the first version of Zipcast, we expect to make a lot of changes and improvements as we go forwards. You can also expect changes to the pricing as we understand how people are using Zipcast better.

Zipcast is available starting now – go to your meeting room or press the Zipcast button above any presentation on SlideShare to get started.

Also today (Feb 16th at 10 AM PST), we will be holding a public Zipcast to introduce Zipcasts to you. Drop by http://www.slideshare.net/rashmi/meeting.


SlideShare Zeitgeist for 2010

by on December 30, 2010

Now that 2010 is coming to a close, we wanted to bring you the presentation trends for the year. We crunched through the numbers for all presentations for 2010, and found out stuff like:

  • what presentations got popular in 2010?
  • What are the presentation trends of the year?
  • What is the average length of presentations?
  • What is the length of the longest presentation?
  • What type of presentations get popular?

Here’s a presentation with some of our findings:

4 years of SlideShare

by on October 4, 2010

Four years ago, on October 4th 2006, we had just launched a few hours ago and were trying to keep up with the avalanche of users joining SlideShare. We realized even in the first hours that SlideShare struck a chord with users – so many people joined immediately and started referring their friends.

SlideShare started as a side project in our previous company. To be honest, right in the beginning, we did not know that SlideShare would get to where it is today. We did not know that presentations on the web would become so popular or that SlideShare would become the way so many people share content on the web.

Today is even more special because we reached 40 million unique visitors last month.

4 years, 40 million visitors. Thanks to each of you who visits SlideShare and shares your content.

Here is to many more birthdays. Thank you for sharing!

JESS3 Uses SlideShare Pro as Platform for Clients

by on August 17, 2010

This week we talked with Jesse Thomas, founder of JESS3, about how JESS3 uses SlideShare Pro…

Who is Jess3? Is it a person or a company?
JESS3 is a creative interactive agency that specializes in product design, branding, social media and data visualization. Based in Washington, DC JESS3 has studio spaces in New York City, France, the UK, Argentina and other creative hubs all over the world.

How long has JESS3 been on SlideShare? How do you use it?
JESS3 has been using SlideShare since April 2007, initially under my personal account. But my history with SlideShare goes back even further: One of my most popular presentations of all time is The 25 Basic Styles of Blogging… And When to Use Each One which I designed along with strategist Rohit Bhargava when we both worked at Ogilvy PR together (uploaded 4 years ago, it has received over 120,000 views).

How does your use of SlideShare differentiate your firm from other agencies?
We’ve been experimenting with the customization and advertising options since they were available. We also take a lot of our internal ideas and move quickly to turn them into decks, without a planned use other than to test and refine ideas.

One such example is my “rant” about the shortcomings of geosocial; this has since turned into a mini-movement, supported by various employees at top platforms (e.g., Facebook, Gowalla and Foursquare) and featured this week on Mashable in an “op-ed” of sorts I wrote titled Why Location-Based Social Media Needs to Get “Passive” Aggressive.  If it wasn’t for SlideShare, we wouldn’t have had such a low barrier to entry for testing ideas, crowd-sourced additional thinking and sharing it in a concise, snackable, updatable and visually engaging way.

Lastly, we take full advantage of uploading a new version without losing views, Likes or embeds. We view content as living and breathing, so that SlideShare allows us to do this means a lot.

You have a very interesting banner on your channel page. Tell us about it…
JESS3 uses SlideShare ProYes, we certainly do (“JESS3 LOVES SLIDESHARE”).   We wanted to get SlideShare’s attention and tell them how much we loved their service, so why not dedicate our banner to doing so?  It also has given us the opportunity to double-down on this platform with our clients, putting our money (and our banner) where our mouth is.

Why did you decide to join SlideShare Pro? What are your favorite features in Pro?
We wanted to customize our page in the way that we have for platforms like Twitter, while also removing the ads and taking advantage of the “featured content” opportunities.

The social web is all about personalization and, when done right as is the case with SlideShare, the impact can be even more powerful than creating your own site.

We notice you brought two of your clients (Eloqua and Zogby) onto Slideshare. What do they value most about the service?
For a B2B client like Eloqua who has an amazing trove of data, resources and insights it was a no-brainer.  We are also confident that their target audience — marketing professionals and C-level decision makers — are either on SlideShare with their own accounts and / or speak in the “PowerPoint” dialect pioneered by business schools  near and far.

As for Zogby, their brand has been rapidly growing in the market research industry, so having a content distribution “hub” like SlideShare that will allow them to share the reports and infographics we will be working with them on makes a lot of sense.  Like Eloqua, Zogby (and, frankly, any company) speaks to decision makers who are used to receiving information in digestible, visually-impactful formats.

How are you approaching the design of their channels?
With both clients, we have been asked to use our illustration skills. This is super exciting for us, as we believe the social web facilitates the most human interactions the digital age has known.  What better way to herald this than to have a team of illustrators create these pages through sketches and by hand? Also, it is a great contrast to have illustrations along side more corporate, clean content.

Additionally, we have a number of Fortune 500 brands interested in creating channels.  Where we are in those conversations is first identifying that there will be a consistent supply of good content and a purpose for being on SlideShare (e.g., marketing within the community, as well as leveraging the content offsite). From there, the fun begins: customizing the channel and mapping out the SlideShare “editorial calendar” just like you would a YouTube channel, really.

To learn more about JESS3, visit their SlideShare Channel http://www.slideshare.net/jess3.

CM Summit – Best and Brightest Shine in NYC

by on June 8, 2010

Today the Conversational Marketing Summit wraps up two days of digital marketing sessions in NYC under the theme Marketing in Real Time. Throughout the event, presenters and conference organizers have been posting their slides to the CM Summit Channel on SlideShare and should post a video archive shortly.

CM Summit kicked off Internet Week NY, a week-long celebration of the most forward-thinking technologies and practices on the Internet.

Opening Slides by John Battelle, Monday June 7
View more presentations from CM Summit: Marketing in Real Time.

CM Summit’s presentations include great overviews by John Battelle of Federated Media and Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley Research. Senior marketers at brands like Amex, AT&T, Intel, Levono presented cross-platform case studies of their own experiences. Facebook, Twitter, Google and the next wave of disruptors like Foursquare, Boxee, and AdMob all shared content .

Follow the CM Summit Channel to view the presentations, receive updates and to access presentations from last year.

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About SlideShare

SlideShare, a LinkedIn company, is the world's largest community for sharing presentations. With 60 million monthly visitors and 130 million pageviews, it is amongst the most visited 200 websites in the world. Besides presentations, SlideShare also supports documents, PDFs, videos and webinars.

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