Document sharing startup Docstoc adds private documents, sync

September 4, 2008 | Anthony Ha | Comments | |

Docstoc, the self-described “YouTube for professional documents,” is launching two new features that take it beyond basic sharing and toward becoming a full suite of products for online documents — MyDocs and Sync.

MyDocs lets you store all your documents for private use then publish them publicly later on, while Sync will keep documents updated, so that a change to a document on your computer will also be updated online, and vice versa.

Before this, Docstoc was basically a Scribd competitor — in other words, a company that let you share documents by embedding them into web pages — albeit one that launched later and tried to distinguish itself by focusing on professional documents. With these new releases, Docstoc is once again coming late to the party (there are so many cloud storage and syncing products out there, although my favorite may be SugarSync). But this may still turn out to be a smart move, because it means Docstoc isn’t limited to just one feature and could eventually become the one service you use for anything document-related.

In a way, Docstoc is becoming more like Zoho, a suite of cheap office applications that’s most impressive for the sheer range of products it can offer to customers. In fact, Zoho added Docstoc-style document sharing last month.

Beverly Hills, Calif.-based Docstoc raised $3.25 million earlier this year. Here’s a demo video.

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About the Author, Anthony Ha

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.

  • Lee
    I don't know about the other services but the thing I love about Docstoc is how amazingly well its search engine optimized, at least with Google, for public documents. I can post something and it shows up ranking high on Google search results only hours later.
  • Interesting idea about Zoho, I wonder if the Docstoc guys will ever venture further into docs management by adding editing functionality. But this definitely seems like something too much for this type of service to me.