Wattpad Introduces After Dark, An App Just For Romance

With more than 40 million registered users and over 100 million uploads for readers to enjoy, Wattpad is probably the most widely used go-to source for open-comunity digital reading content. Completely free to use, readers can browse categories, discover new stories, and even subscribe to follow authors and receive updates on when new content or continuations to their existing works go live. Even better, Wattpad’s readers are able to comment and interact with the author during the creative process, making it almost a collaborative experience.

But with that many users and that many stories, discovery could be something of an issue if you don’t know your way around the site. That problem just got solved, though, as Wattpad released the first app of its kind from its in-house development team, Wattpad Labs, aimed specifically at the content-hungry romance market.

After Dark, an iOS app, has a sleek, engaging interface for finding exactly the right kind of mature content you would hope to find…well, after dark. Users responded in a big way; the app, which had a soft release earlier this month, had over 8,000 downloads in its first week and an unprecedented solid 5-star rating all that time.

“On the heels of the release of Fifty Shades of Grey, interest in mature stories has spiked,” said Melissa Shapiro, Wattpad’s head of global marketing.  “With After Dark, adult romance readers now have a beautiful app where they can find all the steamiest stories from Wattpad.”

The company, whose users upload and share content in over 50 different languages from countries around the globe, has maintained its position as a game changer because of innovations like After Dark. The app, which was conceived during one of Wattpad’s monthly Hack Friday events, only took two weeks for its developers to create from the day the concept was introduced, but the fact that Wattpad even has an event called Hack Friday indicates they’re not done changing the face of digital reading.