SlideShare is a new service that launched today in private beta which aims to be the YouTube for online presentations and slides. I’m not sure how quickly they are accepting new invitation requests, but I was able to get one and have 10 others remaining. If you’d like one, make a comment or e-mail me with the subject “SlideShare Invite” — if you’re the first 10, you’ve got yourself an invite.
So following the exact concept of YouTube, SlideShare lets users upload PowerPoint and OpenOffice documents, converts them to Flash, and makes it available for other users to view them, search for them, and embed them using a simple code — all while forming a community of presentation-givers, product-marketers, conference-organizers, information-seekers, and other slide-fanatics.
Uploading a video was a very simple process, just like it is on YouTube. Simply select the file and supply it with a title, description, and tags. SlideShare has a 20MB file limit which is plenty for most average-sized presentations without sounds and high-resolution images. It didn’t take too long to process either, nor does it take long to load for a viewer. One thing you can’t do is edit the slides while in SlideShare which is a bit disappointing, but then again YouTube doesn’t let you edit videos and some others do, but guess which is the fastest growing website.
I can see many uses for SlideShare. Backing up, showing others, portability, sharing, collaborating, organizing, and simply for the heck of it, all seem to be the obvious ones. I think it’s an interesting approach they’ve taken with the mashing up for two ideas, but I have to say presentations and videos are in a wholly different ball-game. While a service like YouTube has appealed to millions, SlideShare will only appeal to a small amount of people. It’s super-cool, it’s amazing, but I can’t imagine something related to Shakira, David Hasselhoff, or Lonelygirl15 coming through the medium – and with it, there go the masses.
[tags]SlideShare, PowerPoint, Web Office, YouTube[/tags]
