Changes to Communication on Wattpad
Wattpad is the world’s storytelling platform. Creating a safe and dynamic place for readers and writers is at the heart of everything we do. We’ve democratized publishing and empowered millions of writers around the world to tell their stories and build a global audience.
Focusing on our Core Product Offering
Wattpad has always been a special place, where anyone can share their story and reach passionate readers around the world instantly. Part of our mission has been to develop new ways for writers to grow their fandoms, enabling writers to connect with their readers and readers to connect with one-another. Our dynamic story commenting feature has long enabled fans to express their love for their favorite stories publicly and connect with a diverse new generations of authors directly. This has helped Wattpad feel like a book club for many readers and writers, discussing, swooning over, and celebrating their favorite stories.
In addition to the existing and widely-used dynamic commenting capabilities on stories and writer profiles, we’ve also offered one-to-one, direct messaging to support connection among the Wattpad community.
Over time, we’ve found that Direct Messages have had limited utility for our readers, and that one-to-one messaging hasn’t supported the community aspect of our platform. Providing an open forum, commenting is more aligned with our product vision for readers to connect over incredible stories, share ideas, points of view, and experiences. In fact, only a small percentage of the Wattpad community uses one-to-one messaging.
As a result, we’ll be sunsetting user-to-user Direct Messaging on May 6th. Wattpad users will still be able to connect via the public commenting feature on stories and in the conversation section of profile pages, and we encourage both readers and writers to participate in conversations on Wattpad.
Wattpad’s History of Supporting Authors
Writers are the cornerstone of our business, and their success is our success. Supporting authors means helping writers grow in nearly every aspect of their writing careers, and bringing their work to readers around the world. We’ve continuously dedicated new resources to develop tools and programs that help authors hone their craft and take their writing careers to the next level. With Wattpad Originals, the Wattpad Creators Program, the Story School education series, and the Wattpad Publishing Scheduler, we’ve shown our deep commitment to helping authors evolve and connect with their audiences.
Enabling authors to connect with readers from all over the world will always be an important part of the Wattpad community. And our commitment to providing writers and readers with a dynamic community where they can share and connect over stories they love has never been stronger, and we will continue to innovate to support the incredible global community on Wattpad. We’re proud and deeply grateful to be able to bring together readers and writers from around the world on Wattpad.
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