Ok Guys. in light of the recent events, I wanted to see some of the interviews that was conducted in Tapas/tic's name and head of the company, Mr. Chang Kim.
According to several articles, Tapas/tic is trying to incorporate the Korean Webtoon system in the western market. As Mr. Chang Kim who was working in Google came across Korean webtoon and wanted to do something in it. This is a fact that was in several articles in the past.
As for where the Site is heading now, I thought it would help for me to analyze and share the directions and what was said regarding it
http://platum.kr/archives/72119
This 2016 December articles states how bringing in the Korean content from Korean sites (namely 'They say I was born as a king's Daughter, Adonis, etc contracted with Podotree, a subsidiary to the Korean company Kakao) has increased their monetization amount of 48% per month since its implementation in May of 2016. In November, it tripled that of Octorber.
The Article also suggests that its transformation from comic to text book app has given them a huge boost in the app store (ranking among 3~10) which they plan to do more of and has.
Tl;dr - So from this, we could tell that the platform's change was warranted to go towards monetizing contents and going towards book than comic's direction. which is further proven by the most recent interview
In this article which came out in april of 2017 (so a couple of weeks ago), which is titled "On the opposite ground of Marvel; aiming towards female targetted romance webtoon"
This one goes a little more detail in the CEO's plan where he prefers 'Contents with possibilities of adaptations such as movies' for growth of the site. The article also suggests that he hopes to create a 'webtoon' like 'Iron man' who are adapted from comics to games, movies and other mediums
-The article suggests that his primary goal of 'spreading webtoon in the US market' has met success. It says that he spent the first year in explaining the concept of webtoon and finding creators capable of making webtoons.
It goes on to say how much tapas/tic has grown as a platform, obtaining over 21K professionals and non-professional creators with 500K chapters published, With average monthly visitor of 1.3Million
CEO Kim goes on to explains the secret behind its growth as 'going the opposite direction from Marvel and DC' While the two companies make male targeted contents like Avengers, Batman and other hero contents, Tapas focuses on female targeted contents like romance and fantasy. It's also easier to adapt it into other forms which allows the content to have various gates in growth. He also states that there has been increased talks from Hollywood, netflix, amazon and other platforms in regards to finding original materials for adaptations.
He ends the interview by saying that finding out about Korean webtoon allowed me to venture into this directions. The sparkling fresh ideas of Korea can meet a market hundred times bigger when it's brought to US
**Tl;dr - Tapas/tic's main goal was to work with and from the Korean webtoon system. Focusing Female targeted contents to generate more opportunities. Wishes to create or own a big IP that is like the Iron man **
