Pinoys love Wattpad! In fact, based on their insights, 10 people in the Philippines join the Wattpad community every minute. That’s a huge number, and given the rise of smartphone and internet users in the Philippines, it is very likely that Wattpad would continuously have more users in the future.
Furthermore, pinoy’s interest on Wattpad started to grow in the September 2011. It increased further until it reached its peak last December 2014. Today, ‘wattpad’ is being searched via Google in the Philippines about 550,000+ times every month. Globally, Wattpad community spends 13 billion minutes a month to read free stories.A lifetime isn’t enough to finish all stories available on Wattpad – users can access over 150 million story uploads for free.
Actually, just last week during the 36th Annual Manila International Book Fair, the CEO and co-founder of Wattpad, Allan Lau, visited the Manila to witness and share his amazement on success of Wattpad in the country. During the MIBF, he said, ““Wattpad stories have captured the hearts of Filipinos and have spread beyond the app. Today many of the most popular books, movies, and primetime television shows in the Philippines are based on Wattpad stories. When entertainment reflects a variety of interests and experiences, it can spread like wildfire – we see this happen every day on and off Wattpad.”
But what exactly is Wattpad? Think of it as the Facebook of readers and storytellers. It’s the place where people can freely share and read stories. Although Wattpad requires internet connection in order to browse and read free stories, Smart Communications, in partnership with Facebook, made the site and its stories available to Smart subscribers for free via internet.org.
Photo Courtesy: SummitMedia and LIB
Wattpad evolved into a publisher of stories that eventually became blockbuster movies like She’s Dating the Gangster starring Kathryn Bernardo and Daniel Padilla, and Diary ng Panget staring Jadine. Wattpad also partnered with TV5 and LIB (Life is Beautiful Publishing Company) to come up with TV shows with stories adapted from stories published by LIB in Wattpad. This partnership drew in around 1 million viewers in the Philippines.
Photo courtesy: Philstar
The success of Wattpad in the Philippines prompted the company to add 2 new Wattys categories in collaboration with Smart Communications. These new categories include Best Talk ‘N Text Panalo Story and Talk ‘N Text Ka-Tropa favorite. This is the first time in Wattys history to award special prizes to winners. The deadline to enter is October 30, 2015. The Talk N Text Ka-Tropa Favorite category winner will be selected via SMS voting between November 2 –12, 2015. All winners will be announced later in November.
If you haven’t subscribed to Wattpad, you can easily do so by either visiting their full website, Free-data website via Internet.org, or downloading their iOS or Andrdoid app. You can also submit a story if you also think that you’ve the knack of creating and sharing stories.
Giancarlo Viterbo is a Filipino Technology Journalist, blogger and Editor of gadgetpilipinas.net, He is also a Geek, Dad and a Husband. He knows a lot about washing the dishes, doing some errands and following instructions from his boss on his day job. Follow him on twitter: @gianviterbo and @gadgetpilipinas.
