WATTPAD

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & MARKETING

Instructor: Prof. Anuj Kapoor

Academic Associate: Manheer Suwalka

Submitted by: Group 2

Ayush Beria – PC20200016
Pratham Naik – PC20200050
Manisha Bhagat – PC20200035
Rishabh Baid – PC20200055
Rishabh Shukla – PC20200352
Srishti Jain – PC20200171

Date: July 19, 2021

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT, AHMEDABAD

Q1. What are the elements of the Wattpad platform? What drives cross-platform economic value?

Content Engagement
Self-publishing platform to allow writers to post their High volume & high velocity of content
stories free of cost and piece by piece Likes and comments (even at paragraph level)
Content segregated by genres and sub genres Feedback from readers and other writers in the form of
Generic and personalized recommendations comments
Premium features for paid version Readership scores to encourage better content
Ads and Events Data
Native advertisements to organically integrate A wide variety of engagement metrics available
advertisements with the stories Trends in popularity of genres and sub-genres
Brand sponsored stories, posts, contests Paragraph level insights to understand why the content
Workshops and Wattcon to add value for writers is liked by users
Wattpad Studios Wattpad Books
Developing content for TV and movies based on stories Publish Wattpad stories in a physical book form
on the platform
Insights provided to producers based on the granular
data available to explain trends

Cross-platform economic value is created by leveraging the content and the data generated from Wattpad stories to
create content for TV and movies (Wattpad studios). Top content on Wattpad stories is also published in the form of
physical books (Wattpad Books).

Q2. Assess the progress of artificial intelligence efforts to match readers and writers. How does Wattpad build a
hotlist? How does it make personal recommendations? What challenges face the transition from human database
analysis to machine analysis?

To curate a single list to

maximize engagement To maximize individual user engagement
across all readers

Human DB analysis
- Picking top ,tles
based on engagement
metrics
- Everyone was shown
the same list of
recommenda,ons
User based
collabora4ve filtering Incorpora4on of
Item based
- Recommending the context
collabora4ve filtering
items that a user might - Recommenda,on
- Recommending items
like based on ra,ngs based on the last read
that are similar to the
given to that item by - Uses the output of
items rated by the
the other users who collabora,ve filtering
target user
have similar taste with as input
that of the target user

Human DB analysis:

Lower ranking ,tle from two adjacent

Rank ,tles based on the select
ranked ,tles from same genre
engagement metrics like reading ,me,
dropped and replaced with next most
click ac,vity, bounce rates, etc.
popular ,tle from different genre

User based collaborative filtering:

From within the cluster,

Find similarity scores between recommend items with highest
Cluster together users with high
users, based on content weighted average ra,ngs, with
similarity scores
preferences weights as the similarity scores of
other users with the target user
Item based collaborative filtering:

Find similarity scores between Combine the similarity scores of Recommend the top items based
items, based on average user items with target users’ past on the score calculated in the
ra,ngs, or average item ra,ngs history of rated items previous step

Incorporation of context:

Results of step 1 and step 2 act as

Run collabora,ve algorithm to
iden,fy poten,al
recommenda,ons for target user
inputs to recurrent neural
Use the sequence of reading as
network algorithm which
another input to provide context
recommends the next read, given
for recommenda,ons
the previous sequence of
readings

Challenges with moving towards AI based recommendations:

• Moving between bubbles: ML models are good at recommending content that is similar to content that the
users have previously interacted with, but bad at introducing users to new categories of content.
• Cold start problem: Collaborative filtering is based on finding similarity between user preferences or item
ratings and hence will not perform well for new users and items because new users have not interacted with
content to be tagged as similar to existing users and new items do not have ratings.
• Scalability issue: As the number of users and items grow, calculating similarity scores for users and items
becomes computationally more expensive.

Q.3. Compare the strengths and weaknesses of Wattpad's data to the data you imagine that Netflix can assemble
from viewer histories.
Strengths
1. Continuous Feedback via Data: Unlike Netflix, content on Wattpad is consumed over time. Patterns can be
detected while the reader is reading the content. Similarly writers are able to see the reaction to their works
in creation, and hence they can respond to that while creating their content. This improves their odds in
writing a successful story.
2. Text-based Data: Wattpad data is text-based while Netflix data is video-based. It is much easier, less time-
taking and memory-intensive, and more effective to analyse text data rather than video.
Weaknesses
1. Poor Data Quality: Netflix invests a lot in production of their own content and can closely monitor any
content which is added to the platform. On the other hand, it is free for writers to join Wattpad. This could
lead to lower quality of content added by some novice writers. Hence the quality of data might suffer. The
free nature of the platform also attracted writers which tried to game the platform and hence spoil the
quality of data.
2. Low Data Variety: The majority customer segment targeted by Wattpad was teenage girls. Hence, only few
of the genres got attention on the platform. This led to a problem of long tail and also made
recommendations for other customer segments tougher. Netflix had a more rounded customer base and
didn’t face this problem.
Q.4. What advice do you have for Wattpad's future direction?

1. Monitor content by writers: A selling point for Wattpad is that anyone can read and write their stories on it.
Still, it would be useful to monitor the content being created on the platform and punish consistently poor
content with low readership scores. They could also develop an algorithm to detect poor content based on
grammar, and quality of language, enforcing a minimal standard for content on the platform.
2. Incentivise diverse users and diverse content: One of the problems of Wattpad is that it had a very
particular target segment in teenage women. Algorithms tend to please the people on whom they are
trained. Hence it is necessary to incentivise diverse users and content in the current long tail in both the app
space as well as in the algorithm. This will reduce the bias and expand the platform
3. Increase adaptation to Wattpad Books and Studios: Instruct writers on how their stories can be made
better and more suitable for adaptations to physical books and movies and incentivise them for the same.
This will help shift the revenues from ads to more sustainable Wattpad books and Wattpad Studios.