LinkedIn-owned SlideShare has grown to be a more than viable alternative to PowerPoint of late, with the Microsoft product under attack from more places than one.
PowerPoint, the graveyard of Comic Sans font, the sole purpose of clip art and a popular way to negate engagement between orator and audience, has been openly critiqued for years and is even open to a particular Microsoft virus of late.
The computer giant announced this month that a vulnerability in many versions of Windows is being exploited through PowerPoint files.
According to Microsoft, “An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the current user. If the current user is logged on with administrative user rights, an attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.” Grim, all the same.
There are plenty of challengers to PowerPoint’s throne as chief presentation product. For example Prezi, big in Australia and New Zealand, has gained significant support in the past couple of years, but SlideShare, bought by business social network LinkedIn in 2012 for US$119m, seems to be the primary alternative.
Presentations are crucial
Ten years ago, Hewlett-Packard (HP) produced research highlighting the fact we remember only about 20pc of what we read, but 80pc of what we see and do when we are communicating. So presentations in theory are key, but are often put into practice quite poorly. Visuals can prove invaluable as additions to a spoken presentation, giving the audience much-needed variety and triggering interests through multi-sensory ways.
But if your ‘visuals’ are just reams of text, interrupted by endless bullet points, you’re not really giving your audience a chance, are you? SlideShare’s growth, however, (fresh from its first iOS app launch earlier this month) is making the creation of entertaining presentations all the more easier.
Now with millions of users and easily shared presentations from around the world – PDFs, videos, documents and webinars, for instance – its supporters range from the White House and US space agency NASA to tech giants HP and IBM. Contrast this with Amazon’s banning of Powerpoint and a picture is being painted.
Thanks to this infographic from whoishostingthis.com, there’s even tips on how to make sure your SlideShare projects don’t fall into the mundane category either!
Business meeting image via Shutterstock
