logo
WEBTOON Entertainment Revolutionizes Webcomic Discovery with Innovative New Personalization Features and Product Updates

WEBTOON Entertainment Revolutionizes Webcomic Discovery with Innovative New Personalization Features and Product Updates

National Post06-05-2025
Article content
The suite of updates delivers improved discovery features and a personalized experience to make finding your next favorite webcomic as simple as browsing a streaming service
Article content
Article content
Product enhancements include an advanced AI recommendation model, revamped onboarding experience, a new search system, and a 'New & Hot' tab — all designed to improve content discovery on WEBTOON
Article content
LOS ANGELES — WEBTOON Entertainment Inc. (NASDAQ: WBTN), a leading global entertainment company and home to some of the world's largest storytelling platforms, today announced major updates to enhance webcomic discovery and personalize recommendations on its global platforms, including the English-language service. The suite of product updates makes webcomic discovery more like browsing a streaming service, with AI-powered personalized recommendations, dynamic video content previews, and a new onboarding process to better understand user preferences. The new features will make it easier than ever to find and fall in love with some of the world's best stories. Along with its new content discovery features, the platform is also rolling out the ability to unlock an entire series, giving readers a new way to binge their favorite stories.
Article content
'As the category creator who built the massively popular webcomic format, innovation is core to what we do,' said Yongsoo Kim, Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Global WEBTOON. 'WEBTOON has already transformed how the world reads comics, and today we're revolutionizing how fans find their next favorite story. When faced with a vast catalogue of content from around the globe, it can be hard to know what to read next. We want our audience to spend their time enjoying a story, not looking for one. We're making the WEBTOON experience more like browsing the world's most immersive streaming and entertainment platforms, delivering personalized recommendations that take your tastes and reading history into account.'
Article content
WEBTOON's new discovery features and updates include:
Article content
AI-powered personalized recommendations: In a major overhaul to content discovery, WEBTOON's new AI-powered recommendation engine combines insights from user onboarding, reading history, and preferred drawing styles to display personalized recommendations. Users will now select their favorite genres and themes during onboarding, enabling stronger personalization on the WEBTOON Home tab and throughout the WEBTOON platform experience.
Article content
A 'New and Hot' tab, including trailer-style content previews: As the company continues to explore dynamic new content and preview formats, users will now see short, trailer-style preview videos promoting new releases and trending titles within the 'New & Hot' tab. These animated content previews make the WEBTOON experience more like scrolling a streaming service, delivering an immersive glimpse into some of WEBTOON's most compelling series.
Article content
Introducing keyword-based search: The platform has enhanced the search function, making it easier for users to find titles using themes and keywords — not just exact matches. Supporting stronger discovery across WEBTOON's massive library, improved search empowers fans to explore the wide variety of creators and series on the platform.
Article content
A new way to unlock series: For binge-readers or those who prefer full access to read on their own schedule, users now have the ability to unlock an entire series for select completed titles. The new option gives readers more control over how and when they read, and provides additional monetization opportunities for creators.
Article content
Article content
Article content
Article content
Article content
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Prediction: This Artificial Intelligence (AI) Semiconductor Stock Will Soar in September (Hint: It's Not Nvidia)
Prediction: This Artificial Intelligence (AI) Semiconductor Stock Will Soar in September (Hint: It's Not Nvidia)

Globe and Mail

time40 minutes ago

  • Globe and Mail

Prediction: This Artificial Intelligence (AI) Semiconductor Stock Will Soar in September (Hint: It's Not Nvidia)

Key Points Rising AI infrastructure spend bodes well for data center services and GPU designers. Access to high-caliber memory and storage solutions should arise alongside increased demand for GPUs. Micron Technology has a budding high-bandwidth memory solutions business, yet it trades at a considerable discount to other leading semiconductor stocks. 10 stocks we like better than Micron Technology › Over the last few weeks, several big tech companies have reported earnings for the second calendar quarter of 2025. One of the biggest takeaways from behemoth artificial intelligence (AI) developers like Alphabet, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Amazon is that investment in infrastructure continues to surge. Collectively, these companies are expected to spend more than $330 billion on AI infrastructure this year alone. A large portion of this capital is going to data center buildouts, networking equipment, servers, and more chips, of course. At first glance, these secular tailwinds may appear most favorable for GPU designers such as Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices. However, rising GPU acquisition ignites demand for other mission-critical services within the broader semiconductor landscape, too. Let's dig into why Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU) also looks well positioned alongside its chip peers to benefit from rising AI infrastructure spend from the hyperscalers. Is now a good time to scoop up shares of Micron with earnings scheduled for September? Read on to find out. What does Micron do? Nvidia and AMD design advanced chipsets called GPUs, which serve as the core architectures on which AI models are trained and inferenced. Micron enters the equation through its high-bandwidth memory (HBM) solutions, which essentially help keep GPUs running at optimal speeds and help prevent bottlenecks during data workload processing. Outside of data centers, Micron's DRAM and NAND products power applications across Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as smartphones and gaming PCs, as well as cloud infrastructure and more industrial applications such as autonomous automotive systems and robotics. How large of an opportunity is high-bandwidth memory? According to data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence, the total addressable market for HBM was estimated to be worth $4 billion in 2023. This figure is expected to grow at a 42% compound annual growth rate through 2033, reaching approximately $130 billion by the early 2030s. Despite this rapid acceleration, the HBM market remains highly concentrated. Only a few companies such as Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix are producing HBM solutions at global scale. While competition is intense, I see this industry concentration as the foundation of Micron's high strategic market value. As hyperscalers expand AI capacity, many will seek to diversify their supply chains for different chip components. This makes sense, as big tech does not want to rely solely on a singular vendor in order to ensure steady access to chip supply, lock in favorable pricing, and access broader manufacturing footprints. With its growing HBM capabilities, Micron is well positioned to acquire additional market share in this environment. Is Micron stock a buy right now? The chart below benchmarks Micron against a small cohort of leading chip stocks on a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) basis. Data by YCharts. The obvious thing that sticks out is that Micron's forward P/E experienced notable compression during late 2024. This is due, in part, to the lumpiness in Micron's financial guidance since accurately forecasting demand trends for a still-developing market such as HBM is challenging. Investors tend to shy away from uncertainty, which appears to be weighing on sentiment around Micron at the moment. The valuation disparity between between Micron and its peers could suggest that investors do not fully understand or appreciate just how important the company's products are to overall AI infrastructure. Micron's HBM solutions and edge computing products are essential for AI development at scale. As the market begins to connect the dots between Micron's leadership in memory and storage chips to the broader AI narrative, there is significant room for Micron's valuation to expand. With earnings scheduled for next month and the stock still trading for a steep discount to its peers, Micron looks like a compelling buy right now. Should you invest $1,000 in Micron Technology right now? Before you buy stock in Micron Technology, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Micron Technology wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $660,783!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,122,682!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,069% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 184% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of August 13, 2025 Adam Spatacco has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends Broadcom and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Is the stock market in an AI bubble?
Is the stock market in an AI bubble?

CBC

time41 minutes ago

  • CBC

Is the stock market in an AI bubble?

Stock markets surged again this week, reaching new all-time highs. Yet again, gains in financial markets were driven by a handful of companies focused on artificial intelligence. Tech giants like Meta and Nvidia have seen their values soar while investors wait breathlessly for OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity to go public. But for all the enthusiasm, some investors are worried. They say we've been down this road before. And they're pointing to the dot-com bubble in the 1990s when tech companies skyrocketed in value only to see the bubble burst in early 2000. "The difference between the IT bubble in the 1990s and the AI bubble today is that the Top 10 companies in the S&P 500 today are more overvalued than they were in the 1990s," wrote Torsten Sløk, Chief Economist at the economics research firm Apollo in a note on his website, citing the price-to-earnings ratios of the companies, a common measure of whether a company's stock may be overvalued. In other words, he says, this time the bursting bubble could be even worse that it was. And that's saying something. The dot-com bubble in the 1990s had many similarities to the market today. A new technology was offering a potential game-changing way of doing business, and everyone wanted a piece of it. When the bubble burst Many of today's biggest companies were founded in those nascent days of the internet. Companies like Apple, Amazon and Microsoft were key pillars to the then-new wave of technology companies. But other giants of the day failed and were wiped out when the bubble burst. Companies like and WorldCom raised hundreds of millions of dollars and collapsed. From 1995 to March of 2000, the NASDAQ index had climbed 80 per cent. Then the bubble burst. By October of 2002, the NASDAQ had dropped by a staggering 78 per cent from its peak, wiping out all the gains it made during the bubble. Today, it's not hard to find similarities in the markets. Investors are flocking into a space they don't fully understand, before the use-case application of the underlying technology is established. The real economy is struggling to find its footing amid all the turmoil and uncertainty associated with Trump's trade war and on-again, off-again tariffs. Job growth has slowed and the U.S. economy shrank in the first three months of the year. Some of America's biggest companies have been clobbered by tariff costs. GM says tariffs led to a $1.1 billion drop in profits. Ford posted its first quarterly loss in years. And still stocks are at all-time highs and there is a clear sense of FOMO (fear of missing out). "Every bubble in modern market history has been based on a narrative, whether it be the internet or real estate," wrote Wall Street trader Tom Essaye in his newsletter Sevens Report. "Today, that potentially bubble-inflating theme is unquestionably AI technology." What looks different this time But for all the similarities, there are some very obvious differences as well. Barry Schwartz joined the investment firm Baskin Wealth Management as the dot-com bubble was bursting. Today, he's the company's president and chief investment officer "Unlike the dot-com pre-revenue companies, these companies are profitable. They have global distribution, captive customers," he said in an interview with CBC News. Schwartz says Google, Apple, Meta and Amazon all have billions of customers. He says those businesses will continue whether AI becomes a game changer or not. But if it does, those tech giants will be poised to take advantage. "So this is not like chicken and the egg. The egg and the chicken are already on the table. The market understands it," said Schwartz. U.S. President Donald Trump's AI czar, billionaire David Sacks, says most people don't fully understand where AI development really is at the moment. "The Doomer narratives were wrong," he posted to the social media platform X. Sacks says that narrative was built on the notion that there would be a rapid take-off to artificial general intelligence which would propel one AI model to self improve rapidly enough to leave the others in the dust. But he says, the opposite is happening. "The leading models are clustering around similar performance benchmarks," he wrote in his lengthy post last week. "Model companies continue to leapfrog each other with their latest versions." More to the point, those models (like OpenAI's ChatGPT, X's Grok or Google's Gemini) are building what he calls "developing areas of competitive advantage." WATCH | AI 'assistants' could change how you use the internet AI agents could change how you use the internet 16 days ago OpenAI and other big tech companies are starting to roll out the next wave of artificial intelligence, designed to operate with more autonomy. CBC's Nora Young breaks down how agentic AI works and why some think it will change how you use the internet. So, from a market perspective, a handful of AI models are in healthy competition with one another. Meanwhile, the tech giants (Apple, Amazon, Meta just to name a few) are aggressively adapting AI into their business models. And chip makers like Nvidia can barely keep up with the insatiable demand all those companies have developed. Case in point, Nvidia hasn't just seen its stock take off. Its revenues are so big they're hard to wrap your head around. Since 2022 Nvidia's revenues have quintupled. Its profits are up more than tenfold. Tariff uncertainty – even for tech The fears of a repeat of the dot-com bubble may be legitimate. But for now, the more pressing threat is that financial markets start pricing in the impact of the global trade war. Multiple company earnings reports have shown just how deep tariffs are already biting. Automakers like GM and Ford led the charge, but the tech companies aren't immune. Apple says tariff-related costs will climb to $2 billion through the first half of this year. Schwartz says he knows just how dangerous it is to think that "this time is different." But he says the issue boils down to a pretty simple calculation. "It just comes down to one simple question. Do you think we're gonna be using more AI and data in the future or less?" he said.

Billionaire Philippe Laffont Has Sold Shares of Nvidia for 8 Consecutive Quarters and Is Loading Up On This Historically Cheap Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock Instead
Billionaire Philippe Laffont Has Sold Shares of Nvidia for 8 Consecutive Quarters and Is Loading Up On This Historically Cheap Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock Instead

Globe and Mail

timean hour ago

  • Globe and Mail

Billionaire Philippe Laffont Has Sold Shares of Nvidia for 8 Consecutive Quarters and Is Loading Up On This Historically Cheap Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock Instead

Key Points Form 13F filings are invaluable in helping investors uncover which stocks Wall Street's leading asset managers are buying and selling. Over a two-year period, billionaire Philippe Laffont reduced his fund's stake in Nvidia by 83% -- and profit-taking may not tell the complete story. Meanwhile, Coatue's billionaire boss nearly 20X'd his position in a cash-rich international company whose future growth prospects rely heavily on artificial intelligence (AI). 10 stocks we like better than Nvidia › Investors may not realize it, but today (Aug. 14) is one of the most important days of the entire quarter. While earnings season is critical in helping investors learn about the operating health of America's leading businesses, Form 13F filings, which are due today, are equally invaluable. A 13F is a required filing due no later than 45 calendar days following the end to a quarter for institutional investors with at least $100 million in assets under management. It allows investors to track which stocks Wall Street's smartest money managers purchased and sold in the latest quarter (in this instance, the June-ended quarter), as well as identify which trends have the attention of successful fund managers. Although Warren Buffett is the stock market's most followed billionaire investor, he's far from the only billionaire known for their outsized investment returns. For instance, Coatue Management's Philippe Laffont, who's been a big investor of the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, is known for spotting phenomenal deals hiding in plain sight. Laffont's approach to the evolution of AI has been particularly interesting. Specifically, he's pared down his fund's stake in the face of the AI movement, Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), for eight straight quarters, and has been buying shares of another historically cheap AI stock hand over fist. Coatue Management's billionaire chief has sold 83% of his fund's Nvidia stake While some billionaire money managers bid adieu to AI-graphics processing unit (GPU) colossus Nvidia many quarters ago, Coatue Management billionaire boss has been paring down his fund's stake with some degree of consistency for two full years. Accounting for Nvidia's historic 10-for-1 stock split in June 2024, Laffont has overseen an 83% reduction in his fund's position in this AI powerhouse: Q1 2023: 49,802,020 shares of Nvidia Q2 2023: 46,449,700 shares Q3 2023: 45,410,400 shares Q4 2023: 43,222,010 shares Q1 2024: 13,851,410 shares Q2 2024: 13,754,447 shares Q3 2024: 10,138,161 shares Q4 2024: 10,006,488 shares Q1 2025: 8,545,835 shares With Coatue's average top-20 position held for roughly 21 months, as of the end of March, it demonstrates that Laffont and his top advisors aren't shy about locking in gains when presented with the opportunity. Nvidia shares catapulting more than twelvefold since the start of 2023 has given Coatue's brightest investor plenty of reason to cash in his chips. The concern with Philippe Laffont's persistent selling spanning eight quarters is there may be more than profit-taking on his mind. For instance, while the addressable opportunity for AI is sky-high, historical precedent shows that every next-big-thing trend for three decades has endured a bubble-bursting event early in its expansion. Investors have a tendency to overhype the utility and early stage adoption rates of new technologies, which eventually leads to these lofty expectations not being met. No company has been a more direct beneficiary of the evolution of AI than Nvidia, which suggests it would potentially be the hardest hit if the AI bubble were to burst. Another possible consideration for Philippe Laffont is growing competition in the AI-GPU space. Make no mistake about it, Nvidia's Hopper (H100) and Blackwell GPUs are at the top of the pedestal, in terms of compute ability. But this doesn't mean Hopper and Blackwell won't endure headwinds in the coming quarters and years. Specifically, internal competition could prove to be a thorn in Nvidia's side. Many of its leading customers by net sales are developing AI-GPUs and solutions for their data centers. Even though these chips are slower than Nvidia's and they pose no external competitive threat, they're considerably cheaper, more readily accessible, and capable of taking up valuable data-center real estate. In short, these chips could crush Nvidia's pristine pricing power and gross margin. Nvidia's valuation is worrisome, as well. Historically, megacap companies have peaked with price-to-sales (P/S) ratios of roughly 30 to 40. Nvidia is tipping the scales at a P/S ratio of more than 30, as of the closing bell on Aug. 11. Billionaire Philippe Laffont can't stop buying this cash-rich AI stock On the other end of the spectrum is a historically cheap and cash-rich artificial intelligence stock that Coatue Management's billionaire chief can't stop buying. I'm talking about China-based Alibaba Group (NYSE: BABA). When 2024 came to a close, Alibaba was a relatively forgettable holding in Coatue's portfolio, with just 192,728 shares held. But during the first quarter, Laffont came close to 20Xing this stake to 3,801,703 shares, based on the filed 13F. While Alibaba's growth ambitions very much rely on AI, this isn't the company's foundational operating segment responsible for most of its cash flow. Alibaba laid its roots through its e-commerce operations in China. Whereas online retail sales have matured in the U.S., a burgeoning middle class in the world's No. 2 economy by gross domestic product can generate high-octane e-commerce sales growth for the foreseeable future. Based on an analysis from DBS Treasures, Taobao and Tmall combine to account for a 41% share of China's e-commerce space. These platforms should have little issue continuing to generate bountiful cash flow that Alibaba can redirect to faster-growing and/or higher-margin initiatives. However, e-commerce isn't the only arena that Alibaba Group is leading. According to estimates from tech analysis firm Canalys, Alibaba Cloud reined in 33% of Mainland China's cloud infrastructure service spending during the first quarter, which was nearly double the 18% share Huawei Cloud earned as the No. 2 cloud infrastructure services provider. Alibaba is aggressively incorporating generative AI solutions into its cloud platform and giving its clients access to the tools needed to build and train large language models. The expectation is that these AI solutions will enhance demand (and margins) for Alibaba Cloud. Something else that's likely attracted Laffont to Alibaba is the company's capital-return program. It closed out fiscal 2025 (ended March 31) with $51.6 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments, along with $7.4 billion in equity securities and $6 billion in restricted cash. When combined with the cash flow being generated from Alibaba's numerous operating segments, there's more than enough capital available for share repurchases and dividends. The proverbial cherry on the sundae is that Alibaba Group stock is historically inexpensive at an estimated 11 times forward-year earnings. This is modestly lower than its average forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio over the past half-decade, and it stands out amid a historically pricey stock market. Should you invest $1,000 in Nvidia right now? Before you buy stock in Nvidia, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Nvidia wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $660,783!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,122,682!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,069% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 184% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of August 13, 2025

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store