Webtoon Buy Wattpad For 600 Million US Dollars

Naver bought Wattpad to be combined with WEBTOON (Wattpad)

JAKARTA - Wattpad is a story writing platform that is quite popular, including in Indonesia. Through Wattpad, novice writers can get lucky because their work is attracted by big filmmakers or publishers.

Hulu, Netflix and others are looking to find potential stories by adapting the work of author Wattpad. A number of films entitled The Kissing Booth, Light as a Feather and After We Collided were born from the work of writer Wattpad.

It looks like Wattpad won't be the entertainment maker itself it was before. TheVerge reports that South Korean company Naver bought Wattpad for more than $ 600 million, as the company recently announced.

Naver sees Wattpad as a suitable partner to partner with its other brands, namely Webtoon, an online publishing portal that allows artists to upload their work so that it can be adapted to TV series and anime.

In its press release, Wattpad explicitly mentioned Webtoon, and it was Webtoon who issued the announcement on behalf of its parent company, Naver. Here's how Webtoon describes its purchase.

"With the support of Korean technology giants, NAVER, WEBTOON and Wattpad will collaborate to create a stronger and more connected ecosystem in all text and visual story content with a combined main reader of more than 160 million monthly users worldwide," said WEBTOON.

"WEBTOON's innovative monetization model and Wattpad's massive library of stories will give each affiliate prospect a new lever for growth, creating a stronger foundation to fund young aspiring, creative talents," the company added.

A new chapter in our story is about to be written, and we're not writing it alone ... We're thrilled to announce our board has approved an agreement to be acquired by Naver, home of @webtoonofficial! Read the exciting news → https://t.co/xgwGtD4nVz pic.twitter.com/fzoIJyTWrp

- Wattpad (@wattpad) January 19, 2021

Naver is a popular search engine in South Korea. It competes with Google and Facebook in other ways. Naver's famous brand is Line, a messaging app that helps companies become the dominant social media platform in Japan.