In this Speak PR podcast episode, host Jim James reflects on the evolution of online presentation sharing after SlideShare’s acquisition by Scribd. He recounts SlideShare’s early success as the "YouTube for presentations," its massive traffic, and its integration with LinkedIn, but notes the platform’s uncertain future under Scribd. To address the loss of SlideShare’s audience, Jim evaluates several alternatives: AuthorStream (free and paid tiers, embedding, video conversion, analytics), SpeakerDeck (professional look, high view counts for some users) and SpeakerStack (simple upload/embed), Prezi (animated, video‑centric presentations), and Loom (recorded video with talking‑head overlay). He compares functionality, pricing, and traffic potential, highlighting that none match SlideShare’s historic reach. Jim also discusses the broader shift from static PowerPoint decks toward video, audio, and podcast formats for SEO and audience engagement. He concludes by encouraging listeners to experiment with these tools, continue using SlideShare where possible, and share any additional alternatives.
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Hello, welcome to this episode of Speak PR. My name is Jim James, and this is the podcast for anybody that's got value locked up in their organization, and they're just looking for ways to release that. And today we're going to talk about the power of presentations online. And it used to be that I would put everything on SlideShare. Now SlideShare was founded in 2009 in India when 3 fellow entrepreneurs gathered together to make a YouTube for presentations. But now SlideShare, as of this year, has been acquired by Scribed, which means that for those of us that were using what was the YouTube for presentations, we now need maybe to change our tack or to look at Scribe. So I'm looking at ways that we can share PowerPoint presentations like a file share, embed on our websites, but also to find traffic for that content, to share it and publish it with more than just the people we know. So the growth of SlideShare back in 2009, uh, by the 3 founders Amit Rajan, Rashmi Sinha, and Jonathan Boutelle was a phenomenon. And within a few years, they managed to build up 38 million registered users, including me. We all needed a tool to share the PowerPoint presentations and also to publish them. And in 2016, it had reached over 70 million visitors per day. And at one stage, Alexa listed this as one of the top 100 most visited websites in the world. And I relied on it greatly for our own ESOS PR content, but also for our clients, especially as living in China, the SlideShare wasn't blocked. And in fact, being owned by LinkedIn, of course, we could double up with one single login. And it was so powerful apparently that Obama used it to post his birth certificate when he was being challenged by President Trump. But as of, uh, this year, as of August 11th, it has moved across to Scribd. And Scribd was founded by a chap called Trip Adler, and his mission since 2007 has been to create a publishing powerhouse really that's got everything from magazines to books to audiobooks to documents and to podcasts. And interestingly enough, if you go to the website, it doesn't actually mention presentations in form of PowerPoint as a discrete publishing type. When you go to SlideShare, it says that this is now owned by Scribed and that they're managing the account. I'm not sure if there's going to be a migration and a rebranding of the content. Currently, it still looks like SlideShare. I've been thinking about this because I would regularly get a couple of hundred, even thousands of views on a PowerPoint presentation that I posted. But also it's been a great way to go and find out information because companies like Edelman or Boeing will share presentations on, on LinkedIn and SlideShare as kind of a community publishing platform. So now that's changed. Now it looks as though we can still upload our content to SlideShare, but we can also get a new account with Scribd. It, it appears that it's free to post content, but to subscribe to content, it's about $11 a month. As of January of this year, there are a million subscribers, so it's obviously working. And you get what appears to be a one-time, almost like a Netflix for text. So you get books from all manner of publishers, you can get audiobooks, you can get newspapers. So it's really an amazing platform. And the way that Scribd positions itself is that they have wanted to keep reading alive in the 21st century. So that's their vision. But for those, those of us that don't have such lofty ambitions but really just want to share our content either as an embed on a website or to publish it so that we might use it actually for SEO purposes, uh, or for sharing with clients, this creates a little bit of a problem. Because if I want to share a deck, uh, I would often upload it to SlideShare with a password and then send the link to the client because it would obviously be a, a smaller, a smaller file. They wouldn't have to download the file. So what can we use instead? So there's one called AuthorStream, which also then allows you to share PowerPoint or Keynote, which is useful, and PDF presentations. So authorstream.com makes it easier, just like SlideShare did, to put your PowerPoint or Keynote for those of us that use Mac onto websites, but also it can make it into a YouTube video, or rather make it into a video format that then you could repost onto YouTube. So that's pretty handy actually. It has a free version where you can sign up and upload presentations. You can embed them on your blogs through the embed code. You can convert it into HD or non-HD video. It also has a tracking form which is useful. Bit like Vimeo does on the end frame, you can add a call to action. And you can also track views and downloads and viewers' location, which is a really useful function from SlideShare as well, which still exists. Of course it still exists, SlideShare, but it looks as though it's the Mary Celeste at the moment, just floating with no real direction, and everyone's abandoned ship. With the AuthorStream, you can also create branded channels. Now I have to say that looking at it, the rankings of the posts on there themselves are not that great. One of the best-ranked views was 15,811, so not massive, but it does seem to have a lot of functionality. You can use the free version. There's a pro version for £4, $4.20 per month. And a business version at $39.95. And it depends really on things like how many presentations you want to upload in terms of storage, branding, and analytics— the usual fare. So it's free to use to post if you just want to embed your content. Another one is speakerdeck.com, and SpeakerDeck looks more professional. And I saw some of their presentations had 54,000+ views, so more traffic, but I think that may also be because these are being hosted by professional presenters and speakers. They are having there for you the ability to convert to PDF and upload, make it nice and simple for you. Functionality looks a little less complicated. There's another one called speakerstack.net, speakerstack.net. And again, that is an upload of your files and an embed. But what none of these are doing is giving you the traffic that SlideShare had, where it had the 70 million viewers per month. There's another one called Prezi, which enables you to make animated videos and embed video and incorporate video and share in real time across, for example, a conference or a Zoom. With very fancy animated graphics. So really sort of PowerPoint on steroids at prezi.com. But none of them really are replacing the power of SlideShare. So it's a shame. I'm not quite sure why SlideShare has died. So there's a view that really, as a platform, presentations in PowerPoint have been replaced by videos and by podcasts. So maybe the demise of PowerPoint is the rise of podcasts and also of ebooks. Either way, I shall continue to post things to SlideShare because the functionality is still there, but what I'm lacking of course is the audience. But then we'll have to manage that by creating great content and posting that, for example, into my LinkedIn or into Facebook or into newsletters. So if anybody's got any other alternatives for SlideShare and would like to share those, please do. Otherwise, I leave you with these offerings. So Scribd seems to be the biggest game, uh, but it's charging money for the content, which means that if you've got content online, it may not be found unless someone's paying to see it. So in the meantime then, I would say presentations are changing their nature. We can embed video, we can embed audio. The functionality is becoming really almost like a moving video. And I for one am using loom.com now. So rather than sending just a PowerPoint, I'm actually having an embedded video within that and a talking head. So maybe that's also what's happening, is that we're just moving and the technology And the desire for static slides without any voiceover and added video is no longer sustainable. So thank you very much for listening to this. It'll be a short episode because actually there wasn't much alternative to SlideShare, so not too much to report. But thank you for listening to this episode of Speak PR, and I wish you the best of health, a profitable business, and that your sharing through PowerPoint— you find one of these tools to be of service to you. In the meantime, if you would like to talk to me about public relations and also about our Speak PR Mastermind, please do contact me, jim@eastwestpr.com, or find me on LinkedIn at Jim James East West Public Relations, or come to our website. We have a dedicated speakpr.co Mastermind website. So really many ways to get in touch. So thank you so much for listening, and I wish you well. And if you like this podcast, please share it and rate it if you possibly can.
