If you are a fan of any film, television show or piece of popular culture, you have probably discovered fanfiction. And if you’re like me, you may have also had…
Wattpad President Jeanne Lam Describes New Creator Offerings dailydot.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from dailydot.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
WORLD SCREEN
Naver Completes Wattpad Acquisition
ADVERTISEMENT
South Korean conglomerate Naver has completed its acquisition of Wattpad in a cash and stock transaction valued at more than $600 million.
Wattpad will remain headquartered in Canada under the continued leadership of founders Allen Lau and Ivan Yuen. Lau, CEO and co-founder, will report to WEBTOON CEO Jun Koo Kim.
The plan is for Wattpad to grow its teams by nearly 50 percent in 2021, adding close to 100 new roles in engineering, marketing, content and other parts of the company.
With a global community of more than 90 million people, Wattpad is a global leader in social storytelling and entertainment. Along with sponsored brand partnerships, and TV, film and book adaptations, Wattpad Paid Stories are just one of a growing number of paths for Wattpad writers to earn money from their work.
Lau Sees Wattpad and Naver as a Perfect Match By Ed Nawotka | Jan 21, 2021
In an interview following yesterday s announcement of the sale of Wattpad to Naver for more than $600 million, Allen Lau, co-founder and CEO of Wattpad, told
PW the acquisition was “a match made in heaven.” Lau emphasized the synergies between the two companies, particularly with Naver’s Webtoon subsidiary. “We are both multiplatform entertainment companies and are perfectly aligned. We offer online reading and writing, book publishing and relationships with television and film studios. Webtoon offers digital comics and animation.”
Lau sees opportunities in collaborating on a variety of projects and sharing IP, in particular helping to bring the work of Wattpad creators into new formats, including comics and animation, while producers of Manwha, as Korean comics are known, can move into prose published on Wattpad. The same goes for finding new readers readers.