Wattpad

In February 2007, Wattpad announced the addition of over 17,000 e-books from Project Gutenberg making them available to mobile users.[13] According to a June 2009 Wattpad press release, the mobile application had been downloaded over 5 million times.[13] In March 2009, an iPhone version was released. This was followed by the launch on BlackBerry App World in April 2009, Google Android in June 2009 and Apple iPad in April 2010. In December 2015, Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 10 Mobile Version was released. Currently, Wattpad has more than 90 million users[14] who as part of the Wattpad community collectively spend 15 billion minutes each month using Wattpad.[14] As of 2018 Wattpad there are more than 400 million story uploads on Wattpad.

The old Wattpad logo (2006–2018)

As of January 2018, Wattpad had received almost USD $117.8M in funding from investors.[15] In 2011, Wattpad announced that it received $3.5M in total funding from its current investors, and from W Media Ventures, Golden Venture Partners, and Union Square Ventures.[16] Then in June 2012, Wattpad raised $17.3M from a group of venture funds led by Khosla Ventures.[17]

In April 2014, Wattpad announced $46M in Series C funding led by OMERS ventures.[18] In January 2018, Wattpad announced USD $51M in funding from Tencent Holdings Limited, BDC, Globe Telecom's Kickstart Ventures, Peterson Group, Canso, and existing investor Raine.[19]

In December 2011, Toronto-based Wattpad was selected as the hottest Digital Media company in the country at the Canadian Innovation Exchange.[20] In the same year, co-founder and CEO Ivan Yuen was also recognized as a top Canadian entrepreneur at the Impact Infused Awards, sponsored by Deloitte.[21]

In March 2014, Wattpad signed a contract with Pop Fiction, an imprint of Summit Media, to print Filipino Wattpad stories in the Philippines.[22] Other publishers from the Philippines also publish stories from Wattpad.

Since then, some Wattpad stories have also been adapted into teleseries. Filipino television network TV5, in partnership with Wattpad and Life is Beautiful Publishing Company launched Wattpad Presents, a series of Wattpad stories turned into TV dramas. Wattpad stories aired on the show are usually those that were published by LIB Publishing.

ABS-CBN also made several adaptation of Wattpad stories such as "My App Boyfie" by Noreen Capili (noringai), starring James Reid and Nadine Lustre, and the coming-of-age series Bagito starring Nash Aguas, Alexa Ilacad and Ella Cruz. Pop Fiction's best-selling book, "She's Dating the Gangster", written by Bianca Bernardino (SGWannaB) as a Wattpad original, became the first Wattpad story adapted into a full-length motion picture starring Kathryn Bernardo and Daniel Padilla." The movie adaptation was produced by ABS-CBN's film production arm, Star Cinema. Liza Soberano and Enrique Gil also starred on the film "Just The Way You Are", based on the Wattpad story "The Bet" by Ilurvbooks." "Chasing Red" was published by a Wattpad user which got more than 200 million views. In 2021, He's Into Her, a novel written by Maxinejiji (Maxine Lat Calibuso), will premiere on iWant TFC, starring Belle Mariano and Donny Pangilinan.[23][24]

In February 2015, Wattpad launched a second standalone app called "After Dark".[25] The app focuses specifically on the romance genre and is intended for adult readers.

On February 21, 2017, Wattpad launched a chat stories app called Tap.[26][27] Tap offers stories in the form of text messages as if reading a private conversation on someone else's phone. The app was an early success, with over 240 million taps in the first few weeks after the launch.[28] On July 28, 2017, Tap launched 'Tap Originals', a series of original stories produced by its top-tier writers every single week, with some of those series working on an episode-by-episode basis.[29]' and Charlie, Charlie.

On November 13, 2018, Wattpad Next Beta was launched[30] to selected countries[31] for early testing such as United States, Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom, and the Philippines. The launch of the Next Beta has over 50 exclusively selected stories to be paid with WattPad Coins, that can be earned by having your reader spend Wattpad Coins to show them support or by purchasing them with real-world currency to unlock participating Next Beta stories. This has been launched to create a way for writers to earn money through their work and to provide support for readers. WattPad has planned a fast-follow launch for Wattpad Next (Beta) in Spanish-speaking regions and to expand the program, and was available in Latin America and Spain, beginning May 27, 2019 and later worldwide on July 11 the same year.[32]

In an article[33] posted on September 17, 2019, almost a month before the 1st year since the launch of Next Beta, The Wattpad Team has announced the ending of the Next Beta program after results from the program showed that "Wattpadders are ready for a program that funds writers.". By that time, it was renamed as "Paid Stories".

There are also paid books which requires an reader to pay money to read further chapters in the book. Usually the paid books are in better quality than the ones that are not paid.

In June 2020, Wattpad suffered a huge data breach that exposed almost 270 million records. The data were initially sold then published on a public hacking forum where they were broadly shared. The incident exposed extensive personal information including names and usernames, email and IP addresses, genders, birth dates and passwords stored as bcrypt hashes.[34][35]

Later that same year, on July 14, it was discovered that a threat actor from an unknown source was responsible for the breach, along with the sourcing of over 278 million password credentials and email addresses, with breakdown analysis suggested that Gmail, Yahoo, and hotmail (Outlook) accounts were mostly affected, ranging between 31 to 161 million.[36] The Wattpad Corporation has since been taken immediate action to ensure such event will be contained and this whole data breach event is under investigation.

In January 2021, Wattpad announced that it was to be acquired by Naver Corporation, and is intended to be merged with Line's Webtoon.[10]

As of September 2020:

• More than 85 precent of its traffic and usage comes from mobile devices,[37]
• the site has 90 million monthly users,[38]
• there are over 665 million story uploads in total,[13]
• 80 precent of users are female, 80 precent of whom are millennials or Gen Z.[39]

The most frequently voted stories appear on the "What's Hot List". According to the profiles visible on the site, many of these authors are teenagers.

Wattpad section also has a Featured Story list, which promotes content reviewed and approved by staff and an editorial review board. Many of these featured stories are written by self-published and professional writers from different genres. Famous authors like Margaret Atwood, Paulo Coelho and R L Stine have also joined Wattpad.[40] Wattpad also encourages the writers to interact with their audience and promote their stories across social media websites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.[41]

Wattpad has increased in popularity among many fandoms, who take to the platform to craft their own fanfiction.[42] One of the most notable stories on the platform is the After series by Anna Todd, which was originally published as a Harry Styles fanfiction.[43] After its large popularity amongst the One Direction fandom and the app's readers, the story became the most read book on Wattpad,[44] having achieved just under 10 million unique readers on the platform and been read more than one billion times.[45] The series went on to be published by Gallery Books and became a New York Times best seller.[44]

By crafting a spot for fanfiction alongside its other genres, Wattpad prioritises its teen readers and gives the platform a twist.[46] Deputy General Manager, Ashleigh Gardner, added the following about the genre: "What’s unique about Wattpad is that fanfic is treated like any other genre, living alongside other forms of fiction. This makes it more fluid for readers of an original fiction to discover a new fanfic, or inspire a fanfiction writer to start a new story and bring their audience along with them."[47]

Fanfiction is the third-largest category on Wattpad, closely behind Romance and Teen Fiction, many of which are also fanfictions.[46]

Wattpad hosts a number of writing contests each year, including the annual Watty Awards, the largest writing competition in the world.[48] In 2011, The Watty Awards introduced three entry levels (Popular, On The Rise, and Undiscovered) to allow greater chances of winning for every type of writer. Contests are open to anyone who has a Wattpad account.

During the summer of 2012, Wattpad in collaboration with Margaret Atwood, Canadian poet/novelist/literary critic, held the "Wattys": the first major poetry contest offering a chance to poets on Wattpad to compete against each other in one of two categories, either as an "Enthusiast" or a "Competitor". It has been going ever since, and now the contest is open to books of all genres.

Wattpad has formed ties with publishing houses to try to help Wattpad authors to receive compensation for their works. A new branch, Wattpad Studios, was developed to connect popular writers to both the publishing and film industries.[49] Wattpad has, in the past, teamed up with publishing groups such as Sourcebooks to help Wattpad authors receive book deals, and get their work into hard copies.[50] More traditional publishing houses such as Random House and HarperCollins have approached popular Wattpad writers to negotiate publishing deals, allowing the website to serve as a springboard into the more traditional publishing industry.[51]

Author Anna Todd, whose work After has received over a billion reads on the site, was given a publishing deal with Simon & Schuster to turn her online work into a multiple-book published saga. A film version starring Josephine Langford, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, Selma Blair, Jennifer Beals, Peter Gallagher, and Shane Paul McGhie was released by Aviron Pictures on April 12, 2019.

On January 24, 2019, Wattpad launched publishing division Wattpad Books led by Wattpad Studios' Publishing Deputy Manager Ashleigh Gardner, with operations managed by Wattpad Studios' Publishing Director Deanna McFadden.[52] According to CEO Allen Lau, this project was in an effort to take the "guesswork" out of publishing.[53]

Wattpad Books acquisitions uses a mix of their Story DNA Machine Learning technology (algorithms) learning with human editors.[54] This human-and-digital acquisitions team look to Wattpad's large and existing digital library (over half a billion titles) in order to select notable material for publication.[54][55] According to Wattpad Books leader Ashleigh Gardner, this is in an effort to combat bias inherent in human editors.[54] Gardner says that this technology analyzes the data behind each title, looking at story structure and word use in addition to levels of reader engagement per title.[56] This data is then compared to analyses of other books on Wattpad and in the public domain.[56] Once all the data has been collected and engagement has been looked at, human staffers read the titles and create their list.[56]

All published titles are an amalgamation of international hits and notable but known material from their digital library.[52] These titles are distributed by Macmillan in the United States of America, Raincoast Books in Canada, and Penguin Random House in India and the United Kingdom, with their Fall 2019 list available in leading North American retailers.[52][57][58] Outside North America, Gardner has sold the rights to Hachette (France) for Deanna Cameron’s What Happened Last Night.[59] Additionally, Lauren Palphreyman's rights to Cupid's Match have been sold in French (Hachette) and German (S. Fischer Verlgage).[60]

Wattpad's first list consists of six young adult novels.[60] The QB Bad Boy & Me by Tay Marley (28.8 million reads) will be their lead title and was slated for release on August 13, 2019.[60] The remaining five books will be released between September and October 2019 and include: Trapeze by Leigh Ansell (2.5 million reads), What Happened That Night by Deanna Cameron (over 1 million reads), Saving Everest by Sky Reads (17.2 million reads), Cupid's Match by Lauren Palphreyman (46.4 million reads), and I'm a Gay Wizard by V.S. Santoni (404,000 reads).[60] Wattpad hopes to publish 18 titles in their 2020 list.[60]

Besides Wattpad Books, Wattpad announced partnership with Anvil Publishing, Inc., one of Philippines' leading publishers, to create Bliss Books, a YA imprint with Filipino Young Adult and romance fanatics as their target market.[61]

Netflix film The Kissing Booth was written in 2011 by author Beth Reekles. It originated as a story on Wattpad where it won a Watty Award for "Most Popular Teen Fiction" in Wattpad's annual writing contest.[62] By 2012 it had amassed over 19 million reads on Wattpad and, in 2013, was published by Penguin Random House.[63] In an interview with Forbes, Reekles explains what drew her to Wattpad: "I loved the feeling of community on the site, and when I began to share, I liked the anonymity of it because I was so self-conscious about my writing and hadn't shared it with anyone before."[64]

Since The Kissing Booth premiered on Netflix on May 11, 2018, Ted Sarandos called it "one of the most-watched movies in the country, and maybe in the world".[64] The Kissing Booth was the fourth most-popular movie in IMDb's popularity rankings in June 2018.[65] Wattpad has also inked deals with Asian distribution partners,such as pan-Asian streaming platform Iflix to co-produce dozens of original movies based on Wattpad stories out of Indonesia,[66] and Singapore's Mediacorp, to bring Wattpad stories to Mediacorp's FTA channels such as Channel 5 (with exception of CNA) and its streaming service Toggle.[67]

Wattpad, with AwesomenessTV, produces Hulu's popular Light as a Feather.