SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Tapastic announced today that it has reached an agreement to acquire Webtoon Live. Launched in October 2010, Webtoon Live is a grassroots community dedicated to promoting webtoons, vertically-formatted comics that are optimized for mobile viewing.
“Webtoons is quickly becoming a global phenomenon and it is largely due to amazing online communities such as Webtoon Live that paved the way,” said Chang Kim, founder and CEO of Tapastic.com. “Like Webtoon Live, Tapastic is also a thriving comic community, and we are extremely excited to join forces to promote the creators and stories that we love.”
“We are very proud to partner with Tapastic; we feel like this partnership will benefit our community greatly. Our aim with Webtoon Live was to promote Korean webtoons and I feel like the people at Tapastic can help us achieve just that,” said Maxime Deuse.
DaumKakao (Daum webtoons) and SK (Nate webtoons) are both strategic investors of Tapastic. In addition, Tapastic has a strong relationship with key webtoon promotion agencies. Popular series in Korea such as Michelin Star, Like A Wolf, and Jack, The American Ghost are already being published on Tapastic.
Under the terms of the agreement, Tapastic will acquire all of Webtoon Live’s assets at an undisclosed amount. Subject to customary closing conditions, the acquisition is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2014.
About Tapastic.com http://tapastic.com
Tapastic is a leading publishing platform for awesome bite-sized digital comics. Since its debut in October 2012, it has amassed approximately 3,000 creators and houses 4,000 comic series. Tapastic is dedicated to using technology to empower independent creators to share their extraordinary visual stories with the world. The Tapastic app is available for Android and iOS. Visit Tapastic.com to learn more.
About Webtoon Live http://webtoonlive.com
Founded in October 2010, Webtoon Live is a community dedicated to promoting webtoons. In the early days of English webtoons Webtoon Live quickly became a must-visit platform for them. A community of recurring readers started to build up around the website and Webtoon Live started releasing webtoons on a weekly basis thanks to a group of dedicated volunteers.
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