Multiply closes first funding round

July 14th, 2006 at 8:22 am

I’ve been using Vox while in beta. This looks very similar. Has anyone tried both?

July 14th, 2006 at 8:52 am

I gotta say, it looks like every other social networking site. The filter isn’t all that intuitive anyway.

July 14th, 2006 at 11:43 am

i can see spammers using exponentify

July 14th, 2006 at 12:53 pm

I think we are officially in the Social Network 2.0 bubble. It seems that every week a new SN pops up and another gets funding. In my opinion, the ‘network effect’ will begin to set in and only a few SN’s will emerge.

Compare this situation with IM space. If all your friends are using one IM client, why would you start using a different one and try getting all your friends to switch? You wouldn’t. You would simply join the service that all your friends are currently using. And as the network grows bigger and stronger, the network effect strengthens (eBay and Digg are two very good examples of this… they are easy to copy from a technology standpoint, but their sheer size and user base make them nearly impossible to overtake).

July 14th, 2006 at 2:26 pm

To Ashish’s comment, and even Thomas’s, I’d say that Multiply is nothing like other social networking sites. You could even make the argument that we’re not a social network site at all, that is if your definition of a social networking site is one where your purpose is to browse the profiles of strangers to meet new people.

When you signed up for Multiply, where you presented with the headshots of random people? Did you see content from total strangers? Did you find a search form where you could find women, 19-30 years old, within X miles of your zip code? No, you didn’t. The reason is that Multiply is more about leveraging your real-world personal network for the purposes of sharing photos, video, blogs, etc.

What makes Multiply a special form of communication is that it gives you a larger, yet very relevant audience for your posts. That is, the people who have some sort of connection to you and might actually care about what you’re sharing. This focus is reflected not just in the lack of voyeuristic features mentioned above, but also in the defined relationships you have with your contacts (i.e., no generic “contacts” or “friends” here….people are your mother, roommate, colleague, cousin, etc.).

The key example of this differentiation though is the fact that the Explore page (message board) is the heart of the product, and not user profiles. The message board represents everything thats going on in the lives of the people in your life, and the marriage of content with a message thread facilitates ongoing discussion amongst all of these people centered around your posts (and theirs).

There simply isn’t a more engaging way to share your life with your friends and family.

Also, as for us being a YASN (yet another social network), to the extent we are one, we’ve been around a lot longer then most of the newcomers to this space.

July 14th, 2006 at 4:00 pm

Well I think the goal eventually should be to leverage these repositories of online identities to tie together many different services. I think that if you stop thinking of it as a locked in silo and start viewing it as merely a directory with a portal tied to it then you start to let users tie in services that they are interested in and you have a really powerful tool. At least I think you do.

July 14th, 2006 at 6:41 pm

to those who have commented negatively (and also positvely) about Multiply, the points that you raised are all interesting.

however, i have a question for you: has any of you actually used Multiply before?

i’m not trying to say anything, but it just seems to me that, from some of your comments, you know very little about the service.

July 14th, 2006 at 11:46 pm

Why do people always mention Myspace like it’s sooo innovative? (It has a user base almost 3 times the size of Canada, I’ll give them that) But It’s nothing new. I’m 24 now and back in 1999 my generation was on ethnic oriented social networks like Blackplanet, AsianAvenue…that allowed for html editing of profiles and having random friends that always thanked you for the ‘add’. You know the usual social network stuff like the ‘who has the most friends contest’, ‘do you want to be my internet girlfriend/bf’ and ‘the my background/music can enduce seizure faster than yours.’

I think Myspace was really innovative in their grass roots marketing approach. That’s where a lot of the new social networks need to take pointers from. There should be less of a focus on acquiring venture capital and more emphasis on growing and building an active and lively community.

What does the future of social networks hold? Ask the generation that grew up on it!

Stay tuned….

July 15th, 2006 at 4:13 am

MySpace and the other social networking sites do not have the necessary tools that Multiply provides for me or my family. They may be in the same genre but they are two very different tools with different objectives.

I agree with Kayt, once the current generation of MySpace users mature and start looking for something more powerful they will most likely migrate across to Multiply.

July 15th, 2006 at 8:46 am

“There aren’t 50 eBay’s, 75 Amazon’s or 20 Googles.”

Your right. There aren’t. There are MORE than 50 auction sites, many more than 75 online retailers, and plenty more than 20 search engines. They may not all be as successful as the mainstays you pointed out, but even achieving 1% of amazon’s business gives you a significant market share.

As a long time user of Myspace, I quickly became tired with the ‘all looks - no substance’ format that appeals to so many.

Multiply, simply put, has the tools to succeed. For starters, one can host their images, videos, and mp3s without having to go to a third party site. I lost a hard drive and was thrilled to find I had posted some of my favorite pictures on Multiply years ago (and they were still there in high resolution!). It’s incredibly cleaner than the BBS-like chaos found on myspace often, and to reiterate what others have said… it’s networking for grown-ups.

July 16th, 2006 at 5:39 pm

@Matthew J

Obviously there are many such sites. The point is that when a VC (or any investor) dumps $3-20 million into a new site or service it isn’t enough for it to simply survive. Some of these sites will be around for a while, but the vast bulk of the market will be owned by a small handful, just as it is with online BOOK sellers, and yes, search engines too.

If someone wants to bootstrap a service and make it profitable more power to them. If we are looking at another 1997-2000 when over $1 Trillion of wealth was blown on garbage almost indistuinuguishable from 90% of what is covered on this site… forget it. Burn your own money.

July 17th, 2006 at 9:24 pm

I have been using multiply recently. I have tried every other service, friendster, myspace (recently i committed a myspacecide), hi5, but all of them are nothing compared to multiply. Multiply allows me to share photos, videos, blogs to anyone that is RELEVANT to me.

August 2nd, 2006 at 1:29 am

I’ve been using Multiply for over a year now, even paid for it before it went free. I think it’s the best I’ve used comparing to Xanga, MySpace and such. Although it’s always slow to a crawl and the RSS feeds simply sucks…