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Hollywood needs to catch up with the Philippines as far as adapting Internet-first stories into blockbuster movies.
“We are working with Paramount in the US to turn a popular Wattpad story into a movie, but we did that in the Philippines two years ago with Ang Diary ng Mga Panget,” Allen Lau, co-founder of the story-sharing app, tells Coconuts Manila.
“The same with TV. We started [here] a year ago and now, we’re seeing interest in other countries. You guys are innovators, you are ahead of everybody else,” he adds.
Lau, a 47-year-old Chinese-Canadian, is in town for the highly anticipated Metro Manila International Book Fair.
With at least 19 million stories uploaded by Filipinos on Wattpad so far, the Philippines is the second largest Wattpad community in the world with over 5 million registered members, second only to the United States.
Wattpad, for those who are now aware, is a community for both writers (mostly new and undiscovered) and readers. It allows users to create their own stories and read those written by others. A lot of the stories are ongoing projects, so users can indirectly participate in their creation by dropping comments.
Lau first thought of marrying his two passions, mobile and reading, in 2002. “But back then the most popular phone was the candy Nokia, which had a small screen size and people could only read about three lines of text.” So he shelved his project.
In 2006, when the Motorola Razr was the mobile to be had, and screen size afforded users about 10 lines of text, he resurrected. At the same time, he got a call from his friend Ivan Yuan, who had a similar idea. They joined forces, worked remotely from their Canadian homes (Lau in Toronto and Yuan in Vancouver) and launched Wattpad in 2007.
It wasn’t easy, Lau says. “The first year was very depressing. We just had about 1,000 users then.” With nobody writing, the duo used classic books like The Pride and Prejudice and a lot of Charles Dickens to populate the site because “they are copyright-free.”
After two years, a teenager in the UK wrote the first-ever Wattpad story. Lau forgets the title but says “it was a defining moment. She told 50 of her friends and those friends told their other friends. So one writer became two, two became four and so on,” he narrates.
A few months after that, a Filipino living and studying in the UK followed suit. “I could never prove if the Filipino was connected to the English teenager. But the Filipino writer, I think was the starting point of the Filipino community.”
Filipino-written stories, he says, are mostly romance, though Sci-Fi and adventure are also beginning to be popular. Lau thought Charmaine Mercader Lasar’s Palanca win is a testament to Wattpad’s objective. “I think it’s very interesting. Because what we’re doing is democratizing [writing and publishing]. Wattpad is an open platform, where writers can continuously improve their craft.”
Lasar, 20, first heard about the Palanca awards for writers on Wattpad. “Yung mga kakilala ko lang po sa Wattpad yung nagsabi sa akin tungkol sa Palanca kaya nag-try lang po ako,” Lasar told Coconuts Manila. This year she won grand prize in the Nobela category for Toto O.
“The community aspect of Wattpad continues to surprise me,” Lau continues. “How people are interacting and having conversations…our users really continue to inspire us.” Wattpad has also signed a partnership with music-sharing site SoundCloud, because many Wattpad writers add a music playlist suggestion when reading stories.
Wattpad has obviously come a long way. From a mere 1,000 users to producing award-winning writers, from supporting 10 languages in the first month — Pilipino being one of them — to having more than 50. And from carrying just the classics to producing original content for movies, books, and TV. It’s good to know that Philippines is not just where the action is, but is actually spearheading it.
