The Fandom Business Is Booming. Can Weverse Capture Its Growth?
© Mashable Compilation: The Weverse Fandom business is booming. Could Weverse benefit from its growth?HYBE Corporation, the company behind K-Pop mega-hits BTS, understands the fan business. And that's probably why their Global Fan Life Platform project, Weverse, is so compelling. Neither a social network nor a private fan club, HYBE provides a unique online-sales ecosystem that allows artists to release, perform live, host concerts, host official merchandise, and more. is trying to create a "super program" that will allow
Thanks to HYBE's ambitious global expansion, including the acquisition of Ithaca Holdings (home of Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande), a merger with former live streaming industry leader VLive, and partnerships with Universal Music Group and its South Korean rival SM Entertainment, Weverse 86- is hosted by a. artists and actors.
These public figures can post text messages, photos and videos, broadcast live streams, organize concerts and sell official merchandise - all within the Weverse ecosystem - to more than 65 million users, 10 million of whom have monthly assets.
There has never been a simple fan platform of this size. Communicating with artists' fans on services like Twitter, YouTube, or Tumblr is essentially a byproduct of blogging services. Weverse's goal is to create experiences that connect artists with their fans and monetize those interactions. The platform is inspired by the Korean music industry, which lives and dies with its fans. And no one understands this better than HYBE.
Coon Won Choi is the president of Weverse. Before joining the company in 2021, Choi held senior positions at video game companies NCSOFT and Nexon, as well as children's content giant Pinkfong, known for Baby Shark. And despite the fact that he studied history at Yonsei University in Seoul, where he wrote a thesis on the French Revolution. "I've spent more time on engineering than history," Choi laughs on a Zoom call from Pangyo Techno Village, an office park he likens to South Korea's Silicon Valley. Since college, "pretty much all I've done is build technology platforms and content companies," he says. That content may have changed, “but the core of what I do—thinking about boring technical things like account systems and security, managing traffic from around the world, and complying with government regulations—is essential for any type of platform that users need. Being ready for [the product] to see only the fancy cover."
Choi talks to Mashable about how Weverse aims to improve its fandom business, the challenges of large-scale moderation, artificial intelligence, and more. talked about.
Mashable: In a recent interview with CNN, HYBE President Bang Si-Hyuk said, "K-Pop is not as popular as you can see in the market... If we look at our export numbers and streaming growth, the market is slowing down. The growth is very clear. I feel like Even though K-Pop is underselling, K-Pop has always been a strong market when it comes to attracting merchandise or fans, right?
Joon Won Choi: Thanks for saying that, I feel the same way. Looking at the latest numbers from some sources, Chairman Bang is certainly right, but there are [different statistics] from the Weverse monitors. A good indicator of growth is the number of users [follow some artists on Weverse], and that number continues to grow. This is the trend we are seeing: overall activity, engagement and frequency of visits is only increasing.
Si-Hyuk also noted that HYBE will play a stronger role in leading a "label and management company in America" to further globalize K-pop and "raise awareness." What role does Weverse play in this?
We don't limit our borders or our fandom to K-Pop. We call our service "Fan Shop" and you can be a fan of anything. What we're really exploring is the psychological mechanics of falling in love with something or someone.
If there is a passionate fan of something or someone, we understand what they want and offer them the complete package. For artists, we are the best tool to cultivate their super fans and provide a monetization ecosystem.
Do you explore this "psychological mechanism" of fandom when developing software and creating new features?
I am very pleased that we are now at the stage where we are doing this. When Weverse launched in June 2019, a group of 30 talented people came together to develop a minimally viable product and bring it to market. The traffic was very high [moves hand up quickly]. In very short order we had to measure, adjust, empty and repeat again and again. The platform was never perfect for what we wanted to deliver. We know what the fans want, but we're always behind it and we've worked hard to achieve it over the last three years. Today, Weverse has more than 350 employees in Pangyo, Santa Monica, Tokyo and Vietnam. We have such clear-cut priorities that we don't need data to back them up. A great example is the combination of Weverse and [separate apps] Weverse Shop.
I will say that one of my biggest annoyances is having to switch to a separate app to get it.
You see, you know that, don't you? Obviously, you don't need analytics experts to explain this to you. Once combined, we can talk about the user purchase funnel and invest in the psychological aspects of monitoring user behavior in different regions, languages or music genres.
About consolidation; Most K-pop groups have a branded light bar that syncs with their apps via Bluetooth. Will you eventually add this feature to Weverse so it doesn't require a separate app?
We are working on adding this option, but it depends on the artist and label. Such functionality would benefit from consolidation. Another example is a feature we recently tested on a girl group Billie showcase. We added a small screen icon to encourage fans to purchase their album via Weverse. We plan to offer more customization like this on the artist page: if you want to make money, you can, but if you don't, you don't have to.
Twitter used to be a place to find out about artists, and because their account was verified, I knew they were actually tweeting. Now the inspection is paid, this is no longer the case. Does this give Weverse a stronger position in the market as a verified fan-artist interaction platform?
Everyone is asking me the same questions, "When is Justin Bieber joining Weverse?" I've been hearing this question for a year since we bought Ithaca Holdings.
Weverse is not the right platform for all artists because every artist has their own unique way of communicating with their fans. K-pop artists think they are in a very safe environment on Weverse, so when they post something on Instagram, their behavior is completely different from what they post on Weverse, and the reaction is also very different.
We are focused on creating a safer environment for artists. When Weverse launched, a fake filter and other security features weren't high on the list. But as the service grows, so does this priority. This was one of the many benefits of partnering with Naver, a tech giant in Korea. They're investing heavily in machine learning and AI community moderation technology, now we use their technology to manage video and photo posts, and we use a plain text bot [to filter profanity].
They may never be perfect, but with the help of machine learning, they will only get better. Implementing these types of systems is therefore a big step forward, and we are working on additional measures to keep the Weverse environment secure.
In the past, I 've written about racism on the Weverse , which can be overtly or more subtly rooted in ignorance. As the user base becomes more diverse, how much do you care about racist comments or comments about race and identity?
I think this is the most difficult question. Weverse has over 65 million users in 245 countries, so we have a lot of traffic and, as you mentioned, a lot of comments that are racist, bigoted or biased. Due to the large volume of incoming traffic, it is quite difficult to monitor. So that's the problem we're facing right now.
We cannot rely on technology 100%, so we have a human eye operation and monitoring team. We also listen to the community, because sometimes it is faster to get information from them than the internal monitoring system. We also take legal action against these abusers. That's why we have various events and try to make them more comprehensive.
I say this a lot in the office: we have almost 10 million monthly active users, and only 10% of them speak Korean. As for the places where the application has the most users, countries such as Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, the United States and Mexico top the list. The fastest growth we have seen is in India. That's why the Weverse team needs to be at the forefront of embracing and understanding all different cultures.
They just announced a Weverse DM feature. I don't quite understand how it works. If I DM an artist, will they DM me?
The message is from the artist, but is not guaranteed to be addressed to you personally. The interesting thing about the service is that fans know about it and still appreciate it. From an artist's perspective, DMs are like a live chat that fans can read to decide what message they want to convey.
We developed Weverse DM as part of a subscription model we'll be developing later this year. But every label's needs and requirements are different, so it's up to each artist's choice whether or not this is a separate paid feature.
There's only one Justin Bieber and millions of fans, so scalability is a huge factor in building a following. The DM feature is a good example of solving multiple dilemmas: an artist can't DM everyone, but still have a version of DM that makes fans feel like there's a connection. Are there any other issues you are facing in terms of scalability?
I get the same questions about Weverse DM, mostly from people I meet in the US. “Is it really from the artist? Yes, it is. We never consider AI generated comments or posts. At the heart of our service is genuine interaction between fan and artist. So even if a message is generated by a computer, it's a huge risk to the heart of what we do. Our goal is to create the best tools for artists to easily follow and manage the conversation.
Are you investing heavily in AI outside of your partnership with Naver? Honestly, that's what we talk about at work now.
Also! We are not investing in AI, [but] we are integrating it into our work in the office. The benefit we've seen so far is internal workflow efficiency. I mean, we love it.
Can you give me an example of how to use it?
[Laughs] To wrap up a five-page report? Make a bequest out of it? things like this. It can create a really good concept version of something. We look at it and say, "Oh, that's wrong, that's wrong, but the overall story of this makes a lot of sense!" We use it as a seed for brainstorming.
HYBE said it has taken steps to be more consistent in providing digital versions of articles. The Weverse Album feature offers digital versions of albums, photo cards and photo books. When looking at the value of an object, I think people value something physical more. How do you approach creating value around digital assets and investing in this type of technology?
We. Earlier this year, we launched a service called Weverse Collection, where tokens are earned through fan activity. This is the beginning of digital articles within Weverse, and its development is in line with what you just mentioned. The value of digital and physical photo cards complement each other. When it comes to the environment and the essence of fan desire, we believe that ultimately it doesn't matter whether the value is in the physical world or the virtual world. While offering digital assets can be a way to achieve ESG [environmental, social and governance] compliance, we do not believe that digital assets will completely replace physical assets.
[We want them] to complement or maximize each other's use. We're already seeing examples of interactive photo cards in the industry, where you can take a photo of that physical photo card and view exclusive AR content. It's beautiful, it has a "wow" factor. But do the fans really want it? Will they enjoy the AR content enough to watch it over and over again? This is where our research into psychology or user behavior comes into play. This will help us create the best experiences, not just something that looks good.
Would Weverse ever consider entering the secondary market for photo cards by offering a trade-in and resale market?
I cannot give a concrete answer to this question, but I can talk about the direction of the work we are doing. We will introduce a new service called "Weverse by Fans" where fans can customize their products. After combining all the features of Weverse into one great app, our next foray is to introduce more features that encourage fan interaction. We think this is very important.
They are looking forward to the Weverse Con Festival, a multi-day live concert in June. Last year was a virtual event. What's the strategy for running an in-person event specifically for an app?
Weverse Con Festival is the best opportunity for us to show how we can combine the online and offline experience. We attach great importance to Weverse Con Festival because we believe that the features we offer there can be used by various artists around the world to connect with their fans online, help them attend a concert, and have an enjoyable experience. This is our biggest goal.