Allen Lau - GalleyCat

Wattpad Raised $17.5 Million in New Funding

Jason Boog — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 11:23:10 +0000

Self-publishing community Wattpad has secured $17.5 million in new funding from Khosla Ventures. The funds arrived as the writing site posted some eye-popping numbers.

AppNewser has more about the daily posting rates and activities of Wattpad users. In a note to readers, Wattpad CEO Allen Lau explored how the site had grown since its 2006 launch. Here’s an excerpt:

Since then over 5 million stories in 25 languages have been uploaded to Wattpad! Not many people know that we’re seeing engagement numbers which rival Pinterest, as we give users a new way to create and be entertained. In May, people spent over 1.7 billion minutes on Wattpad; crafting and sharing original new fiction spanning romance, mystery, sci fi, thriller, poetry and even fanfiction remixes and mashups that have interesting implications for brands and celebrities like One Direction. But Wattpad isn’t just about the big growth numbers. We’ve created a positive, emotional product that fosters creativity and self-expression. We’re democratizing the written word and seeing incredible new types of collaboration come to life.

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Wattpad Counts One Million Users

Dianna Dilworth — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 13:23:03 +0000

Digital publishing community Wattpad now counts one million registered users. The free site lets readers discover new books and writers share their work with new audiences.

Wattpad CEO Allen Lau announced the news on the company’s blog yesterday. He wrote: “We are thrilled to say that today the 1 Millionth user has just agreed with us! Our team has been growing as well; from two people to the fifteen of us today; we are growing very fast and improving Wattpad all the time and we can’t wait to show you what we’re working on next!”

In the post Lau also hinted that the company has some more big news coming down the pike. (Via TeleRead)

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Wattpad CEO Sees India as Digital Book Frontier

Jason Boog — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 07:59:23 +0000

This week the eBook community Wattpad launched a version of their mobile phone application in the app store for the Indian provider, Bharti Airtel.

To find out more about this international move, GalleyCat caught up with Wattpad CEO Allen Lau. He spoke about readership and mobile adaptation in India: “We are seeing a lot of growth from India lately. Bharti Airtel currently has 110 million subscribers, which grew from 60 million exactly one year ago. Unlike us who are glued to the PCs, many people outside of the North America and Europe are glued to their phones instead. This is the primary way of many people to access the Internet (and hence eBooks).

He concluded: “Digital reading is borderless as we don’t need to ship any physical books. India is one of the most populous countries in the world with lots of English speakers–quite possibly the largest country by English speaking population.”

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