If you can’t find the perfect story anywhere, you have the power to create it yourself. Millions of writers and readers around the world have answered that call, spending 15 billion minutes in June reading and sharing 300 million uploads in 50 languages on storytelling platform Wattpad.

“Today’s audiences don’t want to just passively consume. They want to be part of the story and have a direct connection to the person crafting the narrative,” says Wattpad co-founder and chief executive, Allen Lau.

Ten years on, Lau speaks about the future of entertainment being driven by communities of storytellers and backed by powerful data and insights.

“When we created Wattpad in 2006, the focus was to change the way people around the world experience stories,” Lau says.

Wattpad stories have since become the basis for bestselling books, movies and TV shows, including half-hour prime time weekly series Wattpad Presents on free-TV service, TV5, in the Philippines.

The platform’s growth in Asia has been rapid. In the Philippines, people shared over eight million uploads last month. Lau says that growth is spreading to regions such as Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia.

While Wattpad Brand Stories links popular writers with brands such as Jollibee, General Electric, AT&T and Mondelez, Wattpad Studios, launched in May this year, aims to match the entertainment industry with the stories with the most fans.

“This ultimately reduces the guesswork involved during the typical development process and ensures the success of these stories as they are brought to life across print, film, television and digital platforms,” Lau says.

Lau says the studio is “a natural progression for us as a company”. The unit will, he says, “lay the foundation for us to become an entertainment company that bridges the gap between old and new media”.

Lau says Wattpad’s stories are “unique, diverse and have massive built-in audiences. They reflect pop culture and mirror the characters and trends fans are obsessed with around the world”.

“We deal exclusively in the one thing that powers the entire industry: stories,” Lau adds.

The partnership with the Philippines’ TV5 for the prime-time weekly series Wattpad Presents, is one of Wattpad’s most enduring. Now in its fifth season, Wattpad Presents has produced 200 episodes of 40 Wattpad stories. The Philippines is Wattpad’s second largest market.

Lau says divisions like Wattpad Studios “represent the future of entertainment. They create a link between the online world of user-generated content and the offline entertainment world.

“We believe the future of television (and entertainment on a whole) will be driven by communities of storytellers and backed by powerful data and insights,” he says.

Lau says “the greatest challenge any network faces lies in attracting an audience... Every day at Wattpad we see the stories that pull people in and resonate with audiences around the world. This is what media executives try to replicate behind closed doors. We help take the guesswork out the development process [across] print, film, television, and digital platforms”.

Allen Lau will speak about Wattpad and the power of stories at theContentAsia Summit in Singapore on 1-2 September.
www.contentasiasummit.com

Published on 25 July 2016