Watt’sup

The Japanese site Maho i-land has a huge community of members devoted to reading and writing novels on mobile phones. Three years ago, the site had 30,000 members. Since then, mobile operators have offered affordable flat rate wireless internet and mobile data usage has surged. Maho now has over six-million members.

While typing a 200 page novel on your mobile phone may not be everybody’s cup of tea, for some it has become second nature. “PCs might be easier to type on, but I’ve had a cellphone since I was in sixth grade, so it’s easier for me to use,” says Ms. Nakamura, who has written eight novels on her little phone.

There was a brief system outage today caused by a database failure. Most of the data has been restored, except for some newly registered users and about 150 recently uploaded stories. We are working to restore the rest of the data, in the meantime all system functionality has been returned to normal.

If you experience any other problems, please notify us.

update sept 25: the system data is now fully restored. If you are still experiencing any problems, please contact us.

I’m happy to tell everyone that FeedM8 now has it’s own blog space. Since FeedM8 is officially out of beta, we figured it deserved its own site. So head on over to get the latest word on FeedM8.

The official blog

We receive plenty of suggestions from Wattpad users and most of them are great. But here is an interesting one not likely to be available anytime soon. It’s a sticker to make your ebooks smell like old, musty books–a strange notion indeed! But these guys are really offering this, although most likely as a publicity stunt.

Phil has shared his work Twenty-Twenty, it’s an excellent story about a man’s attempt at reliving a distant memory and to answer his question of what-if.

The story was published in Sensations Magazine Issue 39, Summer 2005 “Vacation” Issue.

Now you can add FeedM8 mobile delivery to your blog using Widgetbox. Widgetbox makes is really easy to add our button so anyone can read your blog on their phone. Check it out here.

We’re inviting all Wattpad users to an early look at FeedM8, the best way to read news and blogs on your mobile phone. With FeedM8 (that’s feedmate!) you get all of your favorite news and blogs directly on your phone’s browser, no software to install and it’s free! Start by choosing one of these popular sites…

We need your feedback during this beta period. Please send your suggestions to us!

OpenLearn, The Open University’s program for making its learning material freely available on the internet, is holding a competition to find the best examples of reuse and remix of their content. Wattpad is one example of using this material and delivering it in a different medium, and many of our members have done this.

You can find out more about the competition here.

Marcher has written a cool review of Wattpad in Chinese. Even cooler is the Chinese version of the Wattpad Reader, thanks Marcher! link

11 days to go until the release of Harry Potter Book 7 - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. This is very exciting for Wattpad members. We love HP and are huge HP fans. While the anticipation for the new book is high, I want to remind everyone that posting these works by J.K. Rowling is not permitted. As with all copyrighted material, do not share them on Wattpad unless you have permission from the owner, or the work is licensed to be used this way. Thanks for your cooperation!