You might have heard of Wattpad, the platform where users can write stories. While news from social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and LINE acquiring users in the hundreds of thousands every other month have always been in the front of the media, Wattpad is just there, quietly amassing a growing number of user base that the company did not disclose.
At least until now.
Having received a new round of funding worth $46 million dollars, the company shares some rather interesting numbers about its writing platform:
- Wattpad has 25 million monthly active users, up from just 6 million the previous time it received funding.
- Users upload one chapter every half a second, which translates to 150,000 story uploads every day.
- Translate the previous number to reading time and we have 10 hours worth of stories we can read every minute.
Because of that, Wattpad users spend more than 6 billion minutes on the website per month – a very interesting data given that some social networks can only achieve this number if they have hundreds to millions of users visiting their websites every day.
And this number is only taking the user’s reading time into consideration. As a social network too, the platform has a high level of social engagement – users can interact with one another, give comments to stories, as well as giving feedbacks to other authors.
Because of this data, Wattpad experimented on crowdfunding last year. While the experiment went well, its CEO Allen Lau mentioned in an interview that Wattpad is focusing on growing its user base first before looking at the platform’s revenue potential. With the funding Wattpad received, it intends to hire more developers and staff to help it grow.
As mentioned, the platform currently has over 25 million monthly active users uploading 150,000 chapters every day and staying on the site for an accumulated 6 billion minutes per month. The content uploaded on Wattpad might be a potential revenue source both for the company and its writers in the near future.
For example, just last week, my girlfriend and I had the opportunity to watch a movie based on a story from Wattpad. Yes – a movie based from a Wattpad story. I can definitely see a revenue potential in the form of licensing rights.
Have you read a story on Wattpad in the past?
Also read: Want to Become a Better Writer? Read our Webcomic.
