Multiply Lands $16.6 Million Series B
Duncan Riley
16 comments »
Social network Multiply has taken $16.6 million in Series B funding. The round was led by VantagePoint Venture Partners with Point Judith Capital and Transcosmos Investments also participating.
As part of the deal ex-Chairman of Intermix Media (the original owners of MySpace) David Scott Carlick will join Multiply’s board.
Multiply previously took $6million Series A in July 2006.
Multiply is one of the older social networking sites (it launched in 2003) and has flown under the radar while first MySpace, then Facebook soared; we last covered the site in November 06. Whilst getting little attention Multiply has continued to grow, and at least according to Alexa is now more popular than Bebo, although lower than Orkut or Hi5. Like many of its competitors it appears to have carved out a strong presence outside of the United States, ranking in the top 10 sites visited by internet users in the Philippines (5) and Indonesia (9); 39% of the sites traffic comes from the Philippines.
Looks like someone is trying to play catch-up
Not to sound crass but Indonesians and Filipinas? Sign me up yesterday.
Great domain name!
Wal-mart started the same year as K-mart and Target. While K-mart was going gang-busters, Sam Walton kept improving and innovating. He wasn’t in a rush to grow quickly, he wanted to grow well. Now look where Wal-mart stands compared to the competition.
I don’t believe Multiply has ever tried to become an overnight sensation. Rather, listening attentively to their users and pushing the envelope in terms of networks and replies, they’ve built slowly and carefully and have a solid, well-thought out system in place that, in my opinion, blows away all of the competition.
Two of those three participating firms aren’t on this list http://www.pehub.com/wordpress/?p=1438 concerning 30+ SNS investments already this year. Personally, I think these are smart bets - the percentage of people not yet using any such service is still huge and the utility of services like this is undeniable. Differentiation may be a challenge, but people building these companies focus a good amount of energy on it and there really is room for lots of players here. imho
Congrats to Multiply, too, they seem like good folk.
I find Multiply to be much more of a social networking platform the likes of Ning and KickApps than it is a broad-based SN site like Myspace or Facebook.
This seems like an insanely large amount of money.
Ning getting $22M was a lot, but the model makes sense to me. While it’s great to have foreign users, I would be interested to see what the monetization potential is ..my guess is that the companies marketing on social networks are after US consumers not those in the Philippines.
Having a lot of users is great, but traffic can be bought. If Facebook can’t get good ad rates with its demographic, what chance does a second-tier, mainly horizontal play social network have of making some bank?
http://www.leveragingideas.com
Just read of a new site for pet lovers. It is http://www.funepets.com, and has been equated to being the MySpace for pets. Really cool site. Has some real funny videos too. This video of fishes playting soccer was hilarious
http://www.funepets.com/videos.php?id=127
Have a good day everyone.
I have to agree with Meg on this one. Slow and stead wins the race, very few of the social networks can do everything Multiply can do. Its like flickr, blogspot and del.icio.us all rolled into one.
Congrats to the whole Multiply crew and to David & Sean for backing a good one. Multiply has built for people, not short-term buzz and it shows in their function-rich platform and sustained growth. Good luck guys!
Money totally wasted!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
Multiply is spammy. Always getting their ‘What you’ve missed’ email
That’s great. Those guys have really stayed the course from my perspective.
I’m not sure where they get their next big push of growth for, or what their exit is. You can’t really buy too many social apps if you’re Yahoo.
It is another example of a company that is not better than everyone, but has picked a mix of products, provided in a clear and focused way and not gotten distracted.
Cheers
Multiply is partially owned by Transcosmos in Japan, which gives it an angle most US web sites don’t have, and that’s access to the Japanese interent ad market which is the 2nd largest in the world. This new round of funding may give them the resources needed to make that happen.
I think that if they can conquer cultural and business barriers, web sites like Multiply probably stand a better chance of making serious cash in Asia than in the US because there is a lot of liquidity in the Asian fund markets, and everyone wants a nice Silicone Valley company there for the portfolio.
Being a big web site in the Philippines isn’t too bad when you stop and figure they don’t have to deal with Facebook and MySpace over there. Besides Filipinos put Friendster in the top 16 Global Web Sites as per Alexa and that’s gotta be worth something right?
Cheers.
@2. Textbook Case
you have something against Indonesians and Filipinas?