Wattpad CEO wants machine learning, monetization to play bigger role in company
BNN Bloomberg
When Wattpad's co-founder thinks about the future of his tech company, he envisions using machine learning and data to tweak stories that will be streamed on car entertainment systems or through voice assistants like Alexa and Siri.
TORONTO -- When Wattpad Corp.'s co-founder thinks about the future of his tech company, he envisions using machine learning and data to tweak stories that will be streamed on car entertainment systems or through voice assistants like Alexa and Siri.
Allen Lau included these ideas in a blog called "the Grand Plan," which he posted Thursday. It was released a year after Wattpad, a Toronto-based storytelling platform, was sold for US$600 million to Naver, the South Korean internet conglomerate behind the Webtoon digital comics platform.
Lau, who remains chief executive of Wattpad, is now plotting the company's path forward under new owners and in a pandemic environment, where screen time has soared and Wattpad's user base has expanded at record speed to reach 94 million readers.
Though users have kept reading Wattpad stories as businesses reopened, competition for attention is stiff because people are swimming in entertainment options.
"Entertainment is going through a period of disruption, where the amount of streaming content continues every year to expand and the need for original intellectual property is higher than ever," Lau said.
He hopes to keep people hooked on Wattpad with a plan centred around machine learning.
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