This is the second post in our weekly “Friday” series on news applications of social media tools. Yes, we know today’s Sunday. Wanna fight about it? Thanks to Scribd communications director Michelle Laird for helping us find examples and for explaining some of Scribd’s features.

The next time you have a print document you want to share with your audience, you might want to consider sharing it with Scribd. Not only does the YouTube for documents present content elegantly and load it quickly, its social functions connect it and your brand to millions of potential readers, including mobile users.

The free cloud-based service, which offers monetization opportunities for publishers, processes PDF, text, Word, PowerPoint, Excel and other file types into its special iPaper format, posts the converted documents on its searchable, Facebook- and Twitter-integrated, community-minded website and makes them embeddable on virtually any third-party space.

Here’s an example from one of Scribd’s most prodigious news org users, USA Today:

Yep, that’s the First Family’s tax return. How much did the president make from his two books? What charities did the Obamas donate to? Answers to these questions are just some of the financial details disclosed within the return’s 65 pages.

We’ll forgive you if you take a pause from our post and scroll through it a bit. We know users are fascinated by raw content. Maybe you’ve experienced this phenomenon with raw photos or video you’ve published. Well, it applies to documents as well. Police reports, court documents (last month’s order in the California gay marriage case went viral) and personal correspondences can be just as spreadable, and Scribd’s an excellent tool for spreading them.

Buttons within the viewer above (historically Flash-based, Scribd’s default view now uses HTML5) streamline reposting (via social networks or another embed) and downloading (as a PDF or text file).

For more than files and forms

Although probably the most popular use, primary documents — government and think tank reports, architectural renderings and political fliers are other examples — are far from the only type of content news organizations are sharing on Scribd. Here’s a look at some other ways outlets are using it:

• Newspaper and magazine layouts
   

  Although other tools in Scribd’s sphere like Issuu might be better for showcasing entire editions, Scribd is well suited for showing off a dynamic cover or front page or other high-impact layouts, like this Forbes spread on caddying for Jack Nicklaus.

• Historical articles
   

  As part of its coverage of this summer’s oppressive heat, The Dallas Morning News shared a print article chronicling a similar stretch of scorching weather 30 years ago.

• Detailed maps and visualizations
   

  The State newspaper offers University of South Carolina football fans this printable guide to gameday traffic.

• Interactive cutouts

  The Stanley Cup’s annual adventures with the champion hockey players who ferry it across the globe is a well-documented tradition. The paper of record in the hometown of last season’s NHL playoff winner invited its readers to join in the fun by printing out a 2D version of the legendary trophy and posing with it during their own travels.

Any other cool uses of Scribd you’ve seen out there? Any new ways you think news organizations could be using it? We’d love to hear about it.

Scribd Branded Reader

We’d be remiss if we didn’t highlight Scribd’s Branded Reader (used in each of the examples above), which is specifically targeted at media companies. News organizations and other outlets can now automatically apply to have documents they upload displayed in special viewer branded with their logo.

This encourages users to patronize the organizations that posted the document and ensures they get credit for posting it as it spreads across the Web. Right now branded readers are reserved for larger media companies.