LinkSure Literature Acquires Comic App Manman
On May 17, 2019, LinkSure Literature announced the acquisition of the mobile comic app Manman. The company is positioning itself to develop new comic IPs based on popular online literature from its reading platform.
A leading online literature company, LinkSure Literature launched the LinkSure Reading app in July 2017 and has experienced remarkable growth ever since. In early 2018, it was the first company to introduce the free reading model with online advertisements as the main source of revenue. The free reading app attracted over 10 million monthly active users in just two months. As of April 2019, LinkSure Literature has over 10 million daily active users, with the total number of users reaching 200 million.
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Founded in November 2015, Manman is a well-known comic platform in China, focusing on original comics and content IP, providing users with excellent comics by Chinese cartoonists. Manman has over 980 original comics on its app, of which 315 are exclusive. The peak monthly active users on the app has exceeded 7 million, with daily active users exceeding 1.15 million. In addition, it was listed in the top three out of over 150 comic apps in China. Currently, it boasts total downloads of over 80 million, total activated users of more than 40 million, and over 500,000 paid users. Its extensive content library contains nearly 300 full-copyright works and almost 1,000 serial comics.
Manman is now attempting to generate revenue through paid subscriptions, advertising, and reward systems. It is currently funded by three investors, notably including Tencent Holdings and Sigma Square Capital.
According to Wang Xiaoshu, CEO of LinkSure Literature, “Our company has competitive advantages in our huge amount of literary content and traffic, as well as our excellent user preference analysis capabilities using big data. We are fully aware of what literary and comic content the users would expect. Manman excels at innovative comic content production. The two of us complement each other.”
After the completion of this acquisition, Manman will quickly garner a large number of users enabled by the traffic from LinkSure Literature and WiFi Master Key (the most popular app on the LinkSure Network). Manman will immediately begin producing comic works based on original online literary works. Wang Ling, the founder of Manman, said, “Our team has obvious advantages in content creation and operation, but a shortage of online traffic. However, now with the support of LinkSure Literature’s funds and traffic, we will usher in a new era of rapid user growth.”
