South Korea's Naver to Acquire Wattpad for $600 Million
By Ed Nawotka
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Jan 19, 2021
Naver, Korea's leading internet platform, is acquiring Wattpad for more than $600 million in cash and stock.
Naver is the leading search engine and digital tools and services provider, a platform akin to Google, in Korea. Naver is also home to the online comics platform Webtoon, which has 72 million monthly users and has produced such popular series as Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe, and worked with numerous notable corporations including the Jim Henson Company, Crunchyroll, and Vertigo.
Wattpad, the online social writing and reading platform based in Toronto, has more than five million writers contributing to the site, and reached some 90 million people in 2020. In all, users spent 23 billion minutes a month on the site, which is best known for genre works written by and aimed at young adult audiences. In recent years, Wattpad has inked numerous production deals with Hollywood studios and launched its own young adult publishing imprint, which has released 21 titles to date. The company has a significant international presence, and says that some 1,500 works from the site have been produced as books, films, or television series around the world.