They seem to be as integral to these users experience of the platform as its writers are. And sure enough, more than 12 hours after we’d concluded our live Twitter chat on Wednesday, tweets and retweets still were soaring: “Thanks for greeting the #KathNiel World!” What you also see in The Philippines, however, is a sky-high level of devotion to the actors who populate Wattpad stories. The readers respond eagerly to twists and turns in the stories they’re following. The writers normally produce installments of long-running serials.
The readers there, Gardner says, vastly outnumber the writers. Wattpad is peer-to-peer reading and writing.
This unusual liaison between media may suggest a valuable model for more traditional publishing companies to explore in the search for new readers. But the mechanism of Wattpad Presents requires an element of blur: there’s a blending of TV-film audiences and readers here that goes beyond simple movie tie-ins. Young love and pink-hued comedy are the stuff of such titles as Cupid’s Fools, Fake Fiancé, Casanova’s Love Game, and A Rose Between Two Thorns. The program is heavily geared to the romance and fan-fiction interests of the millennial demographic that seems to “get” Wattpad most easily. There, Wattpad is known as much more than a huge online reading and writing community. Its arm called Wattpad Presents generates content for film and television productions.Īnnounced in September 2014, the partnership sees TV5 Manila dramatize popular stories from the Toronto-based Wattpad site. #KathNiel is the most-searched term on Wattpad in The Philippines.