Multiply, a social network with a heavy focus on sharing media with friends and family, is getting a major upgrade at 10 AM tomorrow, introducing an overhauled (and much improved) interface, extensive photo editing functionality, a fully integrated photo finishing platform.
Multiply doesn’t get nearly as much attention as bigger players like Facebook and MySpace, but it has built up a solid base of users, some of whom are giving the company a steady source of income through its premium accounts. Where other social networks like Facebook have embraced a mentality of helping users widely share their thoughts and photos, Multiply has held onto the belief that sometimes users only want to share their personal media with a handful of their good friends and family.
With the latest release, Multiply is looking to embrace the “digital mom”. Recognizing that many of the site’s members are adults looking to share their media with loved ones, the site has adopted an interface that is best described as a media inbox. When you first log in, the site presents you with a stream of content similar to Facebook’s news feed (in fact, Multiply had feeds long before Facebook did). Your friends’ newest events, messages, and photo albums appear in the main column, with thumbnails next to each.
Navigation through the new interface largely revolves around a new sidebar at the left hand side of the screen, which strongly resembles something you might see in an Email client. The panel includes links to your most important friends and family, allowing you to make sure you catch all of their latest updates. Likewise, there are filters for the site’s groups, and you can create powerful custom filters – a feature that will appeal to power users.
Aside from this feed of new items, the other main area to get an overhaul in Multiply 4.0 is the Media Locker, where you can upload and manage all of your photos, videos, and blog posts. This is where the new site really shines – Multiply 4.0’s photo manager strongly resembles native photo software like iPhoto, allowing you to drag and drop photos into whatever albums you’d like. You can use a slider to adjust how large the thumbnails appear during navigation, and the top bar includes handy links that let you quickly share albums via Email or through Multiply itself. It’s also much easier to export photos to the site’s printing storefront, which allows you to have your images printed into physical photo books, cups, and other products.
The Media Locker also includes a number of basic photo editing features, like red-eye reduction, color adjustment, and image cropping. Multiply isn’t the first social network to offer these features (MySpace launched similar tools earlier this year), but unlike the MySpace editor Multiply’s doesn’t need a Flash embed. To get your photos onto Multiply, the site offers a range of plugins for your computer’s photo software, as well as an AIR application that can monitor your folders for any new images as they are imported from your camera.
My one major gripe with the new site is the inconsistent appearance of the sidebar. While it appears and changes contextually when you’re in the Inbox or Media Locker sections, any time you visit a page or album on a friend’s profile, the sidebar vanishes. You can still get back to the other pages using the links at the top of the screen, but it’s strange for a UI element that seems persistent to disappear occasionally (imagine if Facebook’s menubar at the bottom of its pages only showed up some of the time).
Aside from that, Multiply’s new site seems solid, offering a social network that can really do your media justice. Facebook may be the web’s leading photo sharing service, and it’s great for sharing day to day photos with friends. But for those shots that really matter you can’t beat full resolution, which Facebook doesn’t offer. Multiply allows users to upload full resolution photos, with the option of paying $20/year for an unlimited amount of storage to to have them all backed up (not to mention its more extensive photo editing features). Multiply isn’t going to overtake Facebook or MySpace any time soon, but it’s doing a great job bridging the gap between photo sharing services like Flickr and the larger social networks.
Looks really cool. I’ll definitely try this one. Do you know if they are cash flow positive yet?
probably not
Pity the service looks like ass…
Hire a good graphic designer, pay him €1000 and you’ll come out with a much better product with wider acceptance, even if the backend and features are the same.
I agree that some of the buttons (especially the tabs at the very top) could use work. But most of it looks pretty good.
I just don’t know how many more social networking sites we can handle before our collective heads explode.
FriendFeed, FaceBook and Twitter are already one too many. Flikr integrates. Good enough?
Who knows…the beat goes on.
wow. for a change, something not twitter or facebook related post. =)
as mentioned in the post, multiply is targeted at the moms. and, i don’t think moms really care about some shiny shimmering interface… as long as it works. though it’s great to have both form and function.
and, yes, jk sounds ‘excited’ writing this article. =) kidding.
anybody, who is not happy with too many social networks. well, you do not need to sign up for each of them. =)
Yes, because I love web services that go down at 10am for maintenance.
I’ll check them out when and if they decide to roll out new features during off-hours, like any real website does.
Why do you assume that the service goes down, just because they are rolling out new features?
This was pretty popular with people over the age of 35 when it launched. [pops a Geritol]
I abandoned my profile there back in 2004/2005 I think. Back then it was all about LiveJournal, MySpace, Multiply, and Orkut for those that didn’t have alumni access to Facebook.
Oddly enough, I can’t sign in with my username as it appears they don’t recycle subdomains. i.e. username.multiply.com
i use multiply too, it’s great…i love it
and now with the new feature i love it more
here they come, out of the wood work.
when is twitter gonna give premium accounts ?
This was pretty popular with people over the age of 35 when it launched. [pops a Geritol
Thats pretty cool!
could this be the next twitter? i doubt it.
Yes, Its Looks really cool. I am using old one but I’ll definitely try this one also.
Wow 26.5M for that? That is a lot of money, I am adding it to digizal, but still…I dont know how a VC could justify giving $26.5 Million for something like that…It’s cool so please don’t get me wrong…
Multiply will never be the next Facebook Twitter or Myspace. The good thing about them is that they have always been steady in the middle, but they never go lower than that. Myspace or Facebook may come and go, but Multiply will always be there to stay. Multiply is highly used in South East Asia.
People don´t seem to get tired of photos. Like with music, it seems to be one of those rare things which are never out of fashion.
Funny, based on the screen shot it looks like Multiply is looking to embrace the “digital dad.”
Doesn’t picasa does something similar to this?
Photos in Multiply has much better colour quality and sharpness than in Facebook, Myspace or Friendster.
I have been using Multiply.com since 2003. It has been one of the most stable and useful social networks. I share all my photos with family and friends and order prints and photo books. I highly recommend the site. I especially like the levels of permissions and security. Very family friendly.
I post my http://www.worstpizza.com reviews there daily as we have a nice pizza following there!
Social media and networks are here to stay we will see many more of them – some will survive but some wont.
There is a next facebook, twitter underway its just a matter of time…
Looks useful, but I don’t think I can get my family on board with yet another social network. My sister got us all on Facebook, but that took awhile. I use Smugmug as my photo-sharing site, and can share it over Facebook. The nice thing about Smugmug is that people don’t need accounts to view photos and order prints. The same might be true of multiply, but social network implies that one must set up an account. I think many people are only willing to maintain one or two social network accounts.
The site looks pretty slick. Nice and clean.
There is certainly plenty of niche opportunities to compete with “bigger players like Facebook and MySpace”.
Oh wow
I’m loving it!
Looks really awesome, I can now easily reach out with my friends’ updates and thingys. Really cool!
For those who use the service…nice upgrade. For those who don’t…well, will this bring those people *off* of twitter / facebook / myspace? Nope.
Per quantcast at least…our site is tied with them, traffic wise…money raised by FunAdvice: zero dollars.
Money raised by multiply: 26 million.
Not having a board of investors threatening to lay you off or fire you if you don’t make the numbers this quarter…priceless.
Is the Multiply Uploader an AIR application? didn’t notice that.
Note: FB/myspace/etc users, do you have an app that AUTO Uploads your pictures to your SNS?
Multiply does!
multiply is really cool. Very fast with uploading medias photos and videos. I like it.
The Picasa Plugin is good but why no iPhoto Plugin?
I have been using Multiply for some 3 to 4 years and recently abandoned it because it was irritanting to have its upload Java facility so inconsistent (one day it worked, the other it didn´t).
Also there was a problem with uploading to groups other than my main one (I maintain another for a school class).
I shall give it a try, because Google is great with its integration with Picasa but the sharing facilities are quite awkward.
Hi everyone,This looks good to me TY For this Info.I will join it as soon as possible,TY Again.
I’ve been using this site on and off for the past five years and all i can say is that they’ve gotten better and better every passing year. I do use twitter and facebook but this site feels like home.
Then again i’m a family man and they’re looking for people like me.