Wattpad Brings Stories to Mobiles

User-generated mobile content company Wattpad has announced the public beta release of its Wattpad service that enables mobile users worldwide to discover, read, share and request user-generated stories on mobile phones
One of the greatest challenges facing the mobile industry today is getting users to find the relevant content, says Wattpad. Most content is consumed because it is a recognisable brand included in a Whats New or Top 10 list provided on a mobile operators site. With Wattpad, mobile users can discover targeted and community recommended stories through Wattpads mobile application which, the company says, provides a highly optimised and rich user experience on a wide range of mobile phones.
Community members can upload anecdotes, jokes, fiction or anything they want to share. Once uploaded, the stories become instantly available worldwide through the web browser on a PC, or through Wattpads Java-based application on mobile phones. Tagging enables the stories to be easily discovered by community members. Members looking for a specific story or type of story can also request the community to locate and upload it. Wattpad is a whole new kind of volunteerism for social networking.
Figures from analyst Informa Telecoms and Media and the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) suggest the market for mobile user-generated content will be worth $13.2 billion (6.7 billion) by 2011.
“With the release of Wattpads new service, mobile users worldwide can now discover, read, share and request stories on their mobile phones with a highly optimised user experience says Wattpad CEO, Ivan Yuen. During our one-month private beta-testing phase, thousands of stories, from science fiction to funny quotes from famous people were uploaded and read by community members. The traffic exceeded our most optimistic expectations and was generated entirely by word-of-mouth. Today we are making this experience widely available to over 2 billion mobile users worldwide.”
To download Wattpads mobile application, mobile users need to go to get.wattpad.com on their phones browser, and follow the link to download. Wattpad works with most mobile phones from major manufacturers including Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, LG, Sharp, Sanyo, Panasonic and RIM Blackberry.
More information via the Wattpad website.