Welcome to the golden age of storytelling (if you’re ok with data)

We’re in a new golden age of storytelling, and it’s one that will be co-authored by creator, audience and machine.

The pandemic has helped remind us how we’re a storytelling species; witness the binging boom on Disney+ and Netflix. But unlike previous eras, our new stories come in the form of videos and social posts, as well as novels and movies, and may be never-ending in their flow as audiences and creators collaborate in a new human narrative.

“It’s not just the content itself, it’s about the connection,” says Allen Lau, co-founder and CEO of Wattpad, a Toronto-based startup that now has 80 million users on its storytelling platform. “It’s about building the fan base. Any writer on our platform can connect to his or her fans.”

Lau is featured on the latest episode of RBC Disruptors, which focusses on the storytelling revolution that the pandemic has accelerated.

Wattpad has seen its user base grow 23% in the past year, with writers and readers now sharing content in 50 languages. From January to early April, the number of new stories written on its platform grew by 151% compared to the same period last year, while the number of new writers was up 125%. Moreover, reading time among those users jumped 30% from early March to early April, with the fastest growing in Mexico and Brazil.

That traffic means lots of data and signals of user preferences, which publishers and studios are increasingly keen to have.

“We can extract more insights, we can ensure more stories will be much more targeted and the fan experience will be richer,” Lau says.

Global Internet trafficincreased 40% between February 1 and April 19, almost all of which came in March and April and much of it on the backs of content-sharing platforms. In a surveyof 4,000 Internet users in the U.S. and Britain, 80% said they had consumed more content since the outbreak, especially of streaming services like Netflix and Disney+ and video platforms like YouTube and TikTok.

Netflix added 26 million subscribers in the first half of the year, while Disney+ reached 60 million subscribers in the second quarter, four years ahead of plan. Facebook’s actively monthly users rose 12% in the same quarter, to 2.7 billion.

As those platforms are showing, the new storytelling age is about much more than couch potatoes surfing the Net. Through the pandemic, we’re all looking for content that connects us with other people, and a bigger purpose. YouTube has noted a spike in sharable content, as views of #WithMe videos — where creators and viewers vicariously share in an activity — increasing 600% during the pandemic.

The major platforms are now looking to communities like WattPad for insights on what works best.

“On our platform, unlike the traditional publishing industry, there’s no gatekeeper,” Lau says. “As a writer, you write, you feel good about your draft, you press the ‘publish’ button, and boom, it’s available to the 80 million monthly users who can access the content freely.”

WattPad has built a team of software engineers and data scientists to develop algorithms that can help writers understand what’s working with readers — and signal to publishers and producers what might sell.

Among its successes: the Kissing Boothon Netflix, After We Collided which just opened in theatres, and the book She’s With Me, a Penguin Randomhouse bestseller.

Those creations show how some of the future of storytelling is no longer in hands only of the storyteller, as audiences demand a role in shaping and sharing content, and publishers turn increasingly to data for guidance.

As Lau explains, “Kissing Boothwas the most popular story on Wattpad in 2012, and then it got a book publishing deal with a U.K. publisher. Netflix spotted that a few years ago and turned that into a movie … that became, at that time, the most-watched, and for sure the most re-watched movie in 2018. And the reason is very simple: the story itself was already good, it’s already validated, and of course, it has the built-in fan base on our platform already. So when Netflix launched the movie, we also ran a big marketing campaign on our platform that activated the old fans and new fans, and that kind of pushed them to watch the movie.”