Recently, webtoon platforms have been releasing video-based short-form services one after another. As short-form content such as YouTube 'Shorts' and Instagram 'Reels' has taken center stage, the webtoon industry is implementing strategies to enhance its competitiveness in the changing content consumption environment. However, there are concerns that the unique characteristics of webtoons may be compromised due to the nature of short-form content, which is consumed mainly for its brief and provocative scenes. It has been pointed out that if a structure is established where only short-form content is consumed while the carefully crafted webtoons are not properly consumed, it could negatively affect the industry as a whole.
According to the webtoon industry on 1st, Naver Webtoon announced it plans to launch a short-form service called 'CUTS' next month. Previously, users could only enjoy webtoon content in a vertical scroll format, but now it will be available in the form of short animations. Earlier, in May, Naver Webtoon's parent company, Webtoon Entertainment, added a short-form animation feature called 'New and Hot' on its North American platform. However, this was closer to a kind of trailer or highlight that displayed summaries of existing webtoon content.
Naver Webtoon has announced that through CUTS, users will be able to enjoy not only summaries of existing webtoons but also new content in short-form. CUTS will allow participation not only from professional creators but also from regular users, enabling anyone to create and upload short animations. Naver Webtoon will also present original content exclusively available on CUTS. Initially, a daily gag comic titled 'A Day of Kim Aeyong,' centered around the cat character from the popular webtoon 'My Daughter is a Zombie,' will be produced as exclusive content for CUTS.
Kakao Entertainment was the first to jump into the short-form webtoon content market. In April, Kakao Entertainment launched a short-form service called 'Helix Shorts.' Helix Shorts is an artificial intelligence (AI)-based technology that automatically creates short-form content from webtoons. The completed short-form is displayed on the KakaoPage home screen to help users understand the plot and viewing points of the works. It is recommended based on the preferences and tendencies of short-form users using AI personalization-based automatic scheduling technology. Kakao Entertainment has stated that since the launch of Helix Shorts, the ratio of users viewing and purchasing works on screens where the service is displayed has increased by about 40%.
Kakao Entertainment stated that Helix Shorts is differentiated from existing text-centered AI technology by its advanced AI technology that considers images and emotions. The AI deeply analyzes key elements of webtoons, such as panel composition, speech bubbles, dialogue, and character expressions, to automatically summarize the plot and generate narration sentences for short-form. The generated narration is converted into natural speech using text-to-speech (TTS) technology and inserted into the short-form with subtitles. Subsequently, it automatically connects cuts and image effects according to the emotional arc of the story and recommends the most suitable background music (BGM) reflecting the theme and atmosphere.
The recent move by the webtoon industry to enter the short-form market appears to be a strategy to maintain competitiveness in the rapidly changing content consumption environment. According to the Korea Communications Commission's '2024 Broadcast Media Usage Behavior Survey,' the short-form usage rate was 70.7% last year, an increase of 12.6 percentage points compared to the previous year. Additionally, short-form content ranked first with 41.8% among preferred content types when watching videos on smartphones. In particular, short-form content, which delivers a strong message in a short amount of time, shows a high preference among younger demographics, including those in their teens and twenties. When categorizing respondents by age who said they watch short-form videos daily, 40.5% of teenagers, 34.7% of those in their twenties, and 30.5% of those in their thirties reported doing so.
However, there are also concerns that this trend may compromise the unique identity of webtoons. If webtoons, which have strengths in long-form serialization and emotional arcs, are produced to fit the short and provocative format of short-form content, they may lose their inherent charm as focus shifts to immediate 'hook' scenes rather than narrative structure. Furthermore, if short-form content is utilized as a type of 'webtoon trailer,' there is a risk that, contrary to the original intent of increasing traffic to webtoons, younger audiences may only consume webtoons through short-form content and not actively seek out the original works.
From the creators' perspective, the burden may increase. They may have to produce separate short-form content in addition to existing serialized works, and there may be instances where they need to alter the directing style or panel composition based on platform requirements. Additionally, due to the nature of short-form content being provided within an average of one minute, there are concerns that the content's diversity could be harmed as the range of material that can be developed becomes fragmented.
A representative from the webtoon industry stated, 'While short-form may seem like a new channel for attracting readers, I worry that it could ultimately undermine the narrative charm that webtoons possess.' They noted, 'Even if platforms follow the short-form trend, there seems to be a need for guidelines that can protect the creative freedom of the artists and the essence of the works.'