PG Monthly Newsletter: About Wattpad (2009-11-22)

by Michael Cook on November 22, 2009
Newsletters

The Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter--Nov. 21, 2009
eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since 1971


Rather than including this with the monthly statistics,
we are preenting this as a separate email to make this
easy to save and reference.


From:

http://www.wattpad.com/about

In 2006, we set out to revolutionize the way people publish and read written
material. Today, Wattpad is the most popular ebook community for readers and
writers to discover, share and connect. With over 4 million downloads, Wattpad
is also the world's most widely used mobile ebook application. Using your web
browser or mobile phone, you have instant access to hundreds of thousands of
novels, short stories, fan fiction, poetry, essays and more. With just a few
clicks, you can share your own written work with people around the world. With
the growing demand for ebooks and mobile reading, this represents a great
opportunity for writers everywhere. Your work is just waiting to be
discovered!

The Wattpad Team

	Ivan is one of the co-founders of Wattpad. He is the technical guru
behind the scenes. The cool features you see on here are most likely done by
him. On the rare occasion that he is not working on a new feature, he loves to
read fantasy, mystery and science fiction stories (on Wattpad of course). He
is also pretty good writer. Check out his stories on his profile.

	Allen is one of the co-founders of Wattpad. He handles the business
side of things. Like most Wattpaders, he loves to read. He is working on his
first story in his spare time. Check out his profile and see if it's ready
yet.

	Eva is responsible for our international and community efforts. When
she is not chatting with Wattpaders scattered across 24 time zones, she enjoys
reading romance stories on her Wattpad iPhone app. Check out what she's
reading on her profile.

///

Here are some notes forwarded from Allen:

> Founded in 2006, Wattpad's vision is to revolutionize the way people publish
> and read written works. The material on Wattpad is created by the community
> of users. Anyone can publish what they have written - a romantic story, a
> fan fiction, poetry or a novel - and read by anyone. All the content can be
> easily accessed on Wattpad's website (www.wattpad.com), mobile site
> (m.wattpad.com) or through the Wattpad application that supports over 1,000
> phone models including Nokia, BlackBerry, Apple iPhone, Google Android,
> Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, LG, Sharp, Sanyo and more.
>
> Wattpad has experienced explosive growth since its inception.  Wattpad is
> now the world's most popular ebook community where readers and writers
> discover, share and connect, delivering billions of pages from its library
> of over 200,000 ebooks created by the community. Wattpad generates more than
> 3.5M visits and 30M page views per month from its websites. With over 4
> million downloads, Wattpad is also the most widely used mobile ebook
> application in the world.
>
> ==
>
> In more lament terms - we are "YouTube for ebooks" and "MySpace for
> writers".  We want to provide a friction-free way for writers to publish
> their content without any intermediary.  Writers can retain copyright of
> their works, although they can also specify that their works are public
> domain or CC.  We DO NOT welcome copyright infringing material.  On average
> we have 20K uploads per month.  Due to the high volume it is impossible for
> us to investigate each upload and verify that it is not copyright
> infringing.  As such, we work with large trade publishers to implement
> filters to ensure that copyright infringing uploads are blocked.  Today, we
> have over 150K "signatures" in our filter.  Our community of writers and
> users also report inappropriate uploads to us.  This "wiki-like" model has
> been very effective.
>
> We also invest a lot in our international and mobile effort.  We support
> over 20 languages.  Also, since the beginning we recognize that majority of
> the world's population cannot speak English or don't have a desktop
> computer.  That's why we want to support all the major languages as well as
> virtually all phone models.  Today, half our traffic is from mobile.  Our
> traffic is also equally split between developing and developed countries.
>
> Unlike project Gutenberg, we are a for-profit organization.  That said, I
> don't see there is any problem in helping the world to eliminate illiteracy
> while making a profit at the same time.

pgmonthly_2009_11_22-about-wattpad.txt

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