Scribd opens up e-Reading on mobile devices

Scribd, which bills itself as the world's largest social publishing company, made its debut in the mobile space today with the lofty goal of becoming the universal adaptor for e-readers and, in doing so, expanding access to millions of written works on any mobile device.

That includes e-Readers with a "send-to-mobile" feature and eventually smartphones through a Scribd application. Scribd's open strategy allows it to avoid the e-Reader wars and run on any device, including the Apple iPhone, Google Android, so called e-book killing Apple iPad, Barnes & Noble's Nook and the Amazon Kindle. In doing so, Scribd can potentially get a piece of the action whether smartphones or e-Readers, a new category of device offering wireless connectivity sans a service contract, prove to be the most successful. The two have been in competition since the category's rise to fame, although they are also increasing blurring lines. Amazon, for example, has begun to open its Kindle service up to smartphones, including the iPhone and most recently BlackBerry. Scribd has more than 10 million documents in its arsenal and has partnerships in place with a number of major publishers including big names Random House and Simon & Schuster.