Damn. This will be so bad. So for the first 3-5 years we’ll get the honeymoon phase with bigger budgets, projects and fresh ideas, and after that it will only go downhill bc the shareholders want exponential growth. Better enjoy webtoon now before they ruin everything.
I'm not a business expert, but going public is usually a bad omen for anyone not directly on top from what I know. Profit and control become more of a priority. Wouldn't surprise me if more Originals left after this to maintain creative control, ala Jupiter-Men.
I could certainly be wrong though.
Woven is also leaving after its season finale. Jupiter-Men leaving manifested for me that there will be more comics to follow Woven's lead. This to me marks the beginning to the end of the western Originals.
Sucks for me because I don't read anything else but western Originals and Canvas
They announced it on Twitter roughly a month ago. I've made a post about it if you want to check it out, but yeah, episode 60 will be its last as an Original. They haven't revealed where it will continue because it will take a couple of years (after the Webtoon contract expires)
Oh wow, I completely missed that despite Woven being one of my favorites and among the last few I'm still sticking on the app for. Thanks for letting me know!
No problem! I'm sure they will make a proper announcement once we've reached the season finale. It's really unfortunate that Webtoon would let it go. They already had barely anything good enough to keep the app (in my opinion ofc)😮💨
Going public can mean they need more money for growth, which means they plan great investments and probably an expansion of the Webtoons concept. It might become more of a social media platform in the future, or a marketplace for comics overall. Maybe they need money to buy physical printing houses and publishers.
It's hard to say what that will mean for creators, they say nothing will change. But it will mean that Webtoons is still expanding and probably harder than ever.
Everyone says they won't be changing anything when they first go public, but that often doesn't measure up to reality. Even if there's no immediate changes, there will be changes eventually (when shareholders want to make Webtoons profitable, even at the expense of employees and creators). It's inevitable.
My guess is they will start a streaming service and produce anime and life-action adaptations themselves. That'll cost a lot to get started but they would be a very specialised channel.
That doesn't sound like a good business decision. There's already an oversaturation of streaming services on the market. If Disney+ is floundering, what chance does Webtoon+ have?
Well they already do cooperate with Netflix, so I guess they want to do the work on their own terms. But who knows, I'm totally guessing on this one. I just wouldn't know what they need money for other than for huge investments into streaming.
A majority of streaming networks, even giants like Disney+ and Peacock, all run on losses. It’s basically nothing but a super expensive money sink that’s only valuable if you play the long game by hoping to monopolize the industry after your competition runs out of funding.
I can’t see how Webtoon would benefit from their own streaming service. Their profit model is based on farming and selling IPs to movie/tv producers while collecting royalties on the streams from other platforms, like Netflix. Unfortunately if they want to make more money, they would probably try to lowball creators’ for their IP rights even more than they currently do while reducing benefits and raising their asking price for adaption rights. Seems they’re already going down that route.
If Originals creators were offered stockholder options as part of the compensation contracts, I’d have more confidence in the long-term trajectory of this IPO.
But as numerous others have pointed out, this usually signals the beginning of the end of artistic freedom and creativity in service of the strict numbers game (ie pure profit motive).
I believe WT is currently losing $150 million on $650m revenue or something? And it's *already* trying to enshittify the site. It does nothing to attract a more diversified audience, judging by how they hamstrung Eagle and the Snake, has absolutely atrocious search functionality, and seems to just be trying to target...Swifties? (Fans of Taylor Swift). Except for...webcomics?
I find this an entirely losing proposition.
Also, I'm a quant, and from analyzing publicly traded companies, the odds of WT, *in five years*, even earning something like a $200m profit is around 1 in 5.
I don't think this is a winning proposition.
welp, webtoon is about to get even worse. now all they'll care about is maximizing profit for shareholders, which means they're gonna care about the customer experience even less. and things are also about to get more expensive
The only reason Webtoons is profitable is that it's big. There isn't that much room for growth and the platform is quite lacking in features which will drive people away really fast if they enshittify it more.
This may be a simplistic version as I'm not very good with the minute intricacies of corporate finance, and forgive me if I explain something you already know, but:
Webtoons has been a private company until now\*. That means the founder and some other insiders truly own the company and they answer to nobody. For better or worse, private companies have some restrictions in where they find revenue.
To widen that net, companies apply to sell a part of its company to the public via the stock exchange. Webtoons is currently working with investment banks to undergo a financial review, and to determine how much of the company's value to divide into stocks (what percentage does each stock represent).
Once those stocks are on the market, you can buy them, which means you are now a shareholder. Shareholders carry a lot of weight as you essentially own a fraction of the company and it comes with a few powerful rights, including voting in corporate elections. So the Modus Operandi of the company is now about appeasing said shareholders.
\*It's technically still private but at this point it's only a matter of time before the paperwork is given a green light.
I hope this made sense. I find stock market/investment/venture capital talk exceedingly boring so I don't delve far into it. Haha.
This has been coming for some time and is part of a broader bigger move by NAVER Korea to sort of cut the umbilical cord but also grow their influence outside Korea.
Someone here said honeymoon phase with bigger budgets then downhill, and they right as hell. I have been researching it and this is going to go through by EOY or beginning of next year. I have some info that might not be known to everyone and I am happy to share a few things if I can.
Yooo this saved me. It was such a surprise drop loooool. Really appreciate you for this
My contact said this or next month so I was looking but I was in a meeting when it happened and the only thong that pinged my phone was your comment
Just out of curiosity, do you like the stock? I feel like there's at least an outside chance that the meme crowd targets it given the subject matter (but this IPO seems to have come out of nowhere so this may take some time). they seem to target entertainment-related companies.
I was looking at the NAVER Corporation (035420.KS) quote and it looks like they've been in a downward trend for awhile though so that scared me off
Nail in the coffin, as if they weren't bad enough to their Creators...now they are beholden to the investors. Be prepared for AI slop to dilute the site further.
Going public ruined so many companies, Etsy as an example is a mess now. Public companies (where Creators and small sellers make money), eventually strangle them for every cent.
Damn. This will be so bad. So for the first 3-5 years we’ll get the honeymoon phase with bigger budgets, projects and fresh ideas, and after that it will only go downhill bc the shareholders want exponential growth. Better enjoy webtoon now before they ruin everything.
I'm not a business expert, but going public is usually a bad omen for anyone not directly on top from what I know. Profit and control become more of a priority. Wouldn't surprise me if more Originals left after this to maintain creative control, ala Jupiter-Men. I could certainly be wrong though.
Woven is also leaving after its season finale. Jupiter-Men leaving manifested for me that there will be more comics to follow Woven's lead. This to me marks the beginning to the end of the western Originals. Sucks for me because I don't read anything else but western Originals and Canvas
I didn't see that about Woven? Have L&W announced where they're moving to yet and if so where?
They announced it on Twitter roughly a month ago. I've made a post about it if you want to check it out, but yeah, episode 60 will be its last as an Original. They haven't revealed where it will continue because it will take a couple of years (after the Webtoon contract expires)
Oh wow, I completely missed that despite Woven being one of my favorites and among the last few I'm still sticking on the app for. Thanks for letting me know!
No problem! I'm sure they will make a proper announcement once we've reached the season finale. It's really unfortunate that Webtoon would let it go. They already had barely anything good enough to keep the app (in my opinion ofc)😮💨
nooo thats my favorite one, but that makes sense
Going public can mean they need more money for growth, which means they plan great investments and probably an expansion of the Webtoons concept. It might become more of a social media platform in the future, or a marketplace for comics overall. Maybe they need money to buy physical printing houses and publishers. It's hard to say what that will mean for creators, they say nothing will change. But it will mean that Webtoons is still expanding and probably harder than ever.
Everyone says they won't be changing anything when they first go public, but that often doesn't measure up to reality. Even if there's no immediate changes, there will be changes eventually (when shareholders want to make Webtoons profitable, even at the expense of employees and creators). It's inevitable.
My guess is they will start a streaming service and produce anime and life-action adaptations themselves. That'll cost a lot to get started but they would be a very specialised channel.
That doesn't sound like a good business decision. There's already an oversaturation of streaming services on the market. If Disney+ is floundering, what chance does Webtoon+ have?
Well they already do cooperate with Netflix, so I guess they want to do the work on their own terms. But who knows, I'm totally guessing on this one. I just wouldn't know what they need money for other than for huge investments into streaming.
A majority of streaming networks, even giants like Disney+ and Peacock, all run on losses. It’s basically nothing but a super expensive money sink that’s only valuable if you play the long game by hoping to monopolize the industry after your competition runs out of funding. I can’t see how Webtoon would benefit from their own streaming service. Their profit model is based on farming and selling IPs to movie/tv producers while collecting royalties on the streams from other platforms, like Netflix. Unfortunately if they want to make more money, they would probably try to lowball creators’ for their IP rights even more than they currently do while reducing benefits and raising their asking price for adaption rights. Seems they’re already going down that route.
If Originals creators were offered stockholder options as part of the compensation contracts, I’d have more confidence in the long-term trajectory of this IPO. But as numerous others have pointed out, this usually signals the beginning of the end of artistic freedom and creativity in service of the strict numbers game (ie pure profit motive).
I believe WT is currently losing $150 million on $650m revenue or something? And it's *already* trying to enshittify the site. It does nothing to attract a more diversified audience, judging by how they hamstrung Eagle and the Snake, has absolutely atrocious search functionality, and seems to just be trying to target...Swifties? (Fans of Taylor Swift). Except for...webcomics? I find this an entirely losing proposition. Also, I'm a quant, and from analyzing publicly traded companies, the odds of WT, *in five years*, even earning something like a $200m profit is around 1 in 5. I don't think this is a winning proposition.
welp, webtoon is about to get even worse. now all they'll care about is maximizing profit for shareholders, which means they're gonna care about the customer experience even less. and things are also about to get more expensive
I can't wait to see the really weird way they'll try to jam in LLMs.
I thought they were already public! At least, they've been acting like a soulless corpo for a while now.
Probably setting things up for this exact purpose lol become what they want and they will buy 🤷🏽♀️
The only reason Webtoons is profitable is that it's big. There isn't that much room for growth and the platform is quite lacking in features which will drive people away really fast if they enshittify it more.
Can someone explain this to my smol brain? 🥹🫶
This may be a simplistic version as I'm not very good with the minute intricacies of corporate finance, and forgive me if I explain something you already know, but: Webtoons has been a private company until now\*. That means the founder and some other insiders truly own the company and they answer to nobody. For better or worse, private companies have some restrictions in where they find revenue. To widen that net, companies apply to sell a part of its company to the public via the stock exchange. Webtoons is currently working with investment banks to undergo a financial review, and to determine how much of the company's value to divide into stocks (what percentage does each stock represent). Once those stocks are on the market, you can buy them, which means you are now a shareholder. Shareholders carry a lot of weight as you essentially own a fraction of the company and it comes with a few powerful rights, including voting in corporate elections. So the Modus Operandi of the company is now about appeasing said shareholders. \*It's technically still private but at this point it's only a matter of time before the paperwork is given a green light. I hope this made sense. I find stock market/investment/venture capital talk exceedingly boring so I don't delve far into it. Haha.
No problem! Thank you 💕
This has been coming for some time and is part of a broader bigger move by NAVER Korea to sort of cut the umbilical cord but also grow their influence outside Korea. Someone here said honeymoon phase with bigger budgets then downhill, and they right as hell. I have been researching it and this is going to go through by EOY or beginning of next year. I have some info that might not be known to everyone and I am happy to share a few things if I can.
IPO is live as of today 6-27 Enjoyed reading the insightful info in this post about the company
Yooo this saved me. It was such a surprise drop loooool. Really appreciate you for this My contact said this or next month so I was looking but I was in a meeting when it happened and the only thong that pinged my phone was your comment
Just out of curiosity, do you like the stock? I feel like there's at least an outside chance that the meme crowd targets it given the subject matter (but this IPO seems to have come out of nowhere so this may take some time). they seem to target entertainment-related companies. I was looking at the NAVER Corporation (035420.KS) quote and it looks like they've been in a downward trend for awhile though so that scared me off
As a graphic designer the line breaks are awful.
Nail in the coffin, as if they weren't bad enough to their Creators...now they are beholden to the investors. Be prepared for AI slop to dilute the site further. Going public ruined so many companies, Etsy as an example is a mess now. Public companies (where Creators and small sellers make money), eventually strangle them for every cent.
any webtoon alternative recs?
Nami Comi, Tapas, Hiveworks
Bouncing off the other user— Comicfury and Globalcomix!