Issuu – Glorify Your Documents

There are a few services that allow you to upload your documents and distribute them through a flash document viewer. None of them though do it quite as beautifully and creatively as Issuu does.

Think of of Docstoc and Scribd the Wal-Mart of documents and Issuu the IKEA of documents. They both have products that are useful, but IKEA has the higher quality.

Issuu supports three major file formats, Word, PDF and Powerpoint. For my review I will be using a powerpoint document.

One thing I really like about the uploading process is that the link for it is always on the navigation bar once logged in. So no matter what I am doing whenever I get the urge I simply am one click away. Once you are to the upload page you are given two options. You can upload one file or multiple. Uploading multiple files doesn’t allow you to enter the meta data right away. Issuu has all the standard meta data forms. One thing that stood out was the ability to link music to your document that you were uploading. You also have the ability to target your audience with there location. Once done editing your meta data simply click upload.

You are then directed to what is called My Library, a collection of all your uploaded documents and here is where the actual magic is. There are virtually limitless things you can do with your document. You can drag and drop your documents into seperate folders, share your document, edit it, publish, view statistics and even optimize for search engines… all on one page.

The one thing that stands out the most for me is the statistics. They are beautiful, rather detailed, and should fill all basic needs rather well.

Issuu is not all about uploading and sharing documents. Since following people is the new cool thing to do you can also follow people that upload documents on a regular basis and view them through a status feed.

Of course Issuu is free but they do offer a premium service. With Issuu premium you are given a white label version of the site and detailed statistics. You can also tailor your embedded document to your site.

Issuu is beautifully designed, well put together and was definitely thought through. I suggest to anyone that is looking for quality documents, service and design to check out Issuu… I promise you won’t regret it.

Check out my Issuu document http://issuu.com/holdenpage/docs/web20

Written by Holden Page. Edited somewhat by Alex Wilhelm.

- Tyler C.