Multiply, a small but sophisticated social networking service with one of the most loyal userbases on the web, unvieled a long list of new features this afternoon. It might be because it's Friday night here in the US, but I'm feeling a little crazy. Since there's some healthy Facebook backlash developing, since social networking is not a one-size fits all phenomenon (demands for data standards excepted), and since Multiply's new features look so much like Facebook - it seems a good time to compare the two services. Facebook is a great place to go if you want to find a lot of people, particularly college educated people. There is a world of social networking beyond it, however.
Multiply has always had impressively flexible privacy controls; today it added greater precision over privacy, audio and video commenting, media import from other sites and more.
Facebook made headlines with its Platform and is now worth more than most remaining US automobile companies, but Multiply is no fly-by-night operation, either. Remember when the news came out that despite all the blog love, Flickr was actually smaller than the unheard-of at the time Photobucket? Multiply may be small by major social network standards (the site's front page says "Our 7 million members upload more than 1,500,000 photos and 16,000 videos every day") but it would be a mistake for market watchers to ignore it. Multiply users love the company, too- Multiply doesn't appear to anger their users like so many of its competitors do.
If you're interested in a good solid, state of the art but still easy to use social networking site, these new features at Multiply make it a very compelling offering. Does it stand a chance at survival in the face of other services' near total domination of the social networking market? Yes, there are 6 billion people in the world and I would not bet against a service as solid as this one.
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Seems like a great service and I guess the only question to ask - does it have all your friends on it :)?
I personally use Facebook more for a social interaction with multiple partners and friends who have established accounts, circle of friends - just like me. Finding a time for another social network might be difficult however good it sounds.
Posted by: Alex | December 7, 2007 6:41 PMWhat a refreshing article. Sometimes we can get so distracted with what the 'top players' are and arent doing that we dont look around at what else is going on. Good to hear these guys seem to be doing well.
Posted by: Vyrotek | December 7, 2007 10:23 PMActually I don't think 'we' get distracted by the top players, but I would say that tech writers certainly do. Otherwise where would multiply.com have gotten users, except from the 'we'? I just think tech writing and blogging is extremely, blindingly myopic.
Also, I think this is an inaccurate, that Facebook "is now worth more than most remaining US automobile companies." There is a world of difference between the stock market worth of a publicly traded company, where shares are bought and sold at those prices daily, and a valuation by a company or two that needed the ad contract headlines more than they needed the piece of the company being valued. Facebook was valued, by Microsoft, at $15B for the purposes of getting the advertising deal from Facebook. Had there been no advertising deal, does anyone believe they'd have paid that premium for that piece of the company?
In any case, go multiply.com! I'd love to see as many social networks out there with 10mln plus users so I may one day hope to stop hearing about Facebook.
Posted by: Morgan | December 7, 2007 11:50 PMI use both Multiply and Facebook, and i tend to agree with this post. I would add a couple of points:
- Multiply has better integration with LiveJournal; every LJ post I make is automatically posted on my Multiply page.
- Multiply, at least in my opinion, is more convenient for online marketplaces. I'd say if you want to sell stuff through a social network, Multiply is the way to go.
On the other hand, Facebook's "share" tool/bookmarklet is really convenient... I could probably set up something like it for Multiply, but with Facebook it's already there.
As a whole, I do prefer Multiply. And if the community is smaller... well, it might be better that way. I know I miss the old days of LiveJournal when it was a tinier pond.
Posted by: Oz | December 8, 2007 12:02 AMOz: On Multiply, click on the "share" link found under the body of any post, and you will find "BlogThis!" bookmarklet.
Also, have you checked out the Multiply Toolbar (for Firefox and IE) that was released a few weeks ago? If not, see if that works for what you are looking for. It's available at http://multiply.com/toolbar and it's more powerful that the bookmarklet and provides many additional features.
Posted by: prakash | December 8, 2007 1:34 AMVery impressive thoughts, I'm not really a fun of those social networking sites, but I guess based on what you are saying guys, it looks like I'm missing a lot of fun things..
Posted by: ITrush | December 8, 2007 4:08 AMVery impressive thoughts, I'm not really a fun of those social networking sites, but I guess based on what you are saying guys, it looks like I'm missing a lot of fun things..
Posted by: ITrush | December 8, 2007 4:08 AMNhick
http://www.itrush.com
i'm one of those loyal fans. i've been with multiply since the early fall of 2004 and despite the fact that i also signed up for facebook as soon as they opened up to non-students, i've never thought of the two products as similar in terms of quality nor services offered. i find facebook's feed annoying, full of information i simply don't care about (do i really need to know every time a friend is bitten by a vampire?). multiply has had their feed longer, and therefore has had more time to fiddle with it and make it better, but even since day one it's worked better than facebook's feed, imo.
i'm also super excited about the audio and video replies. what other social network has something like that? sure, you can post your own video reply in your own blog to someone else's post elsewhere. but on multiply it's all integrated and it's So Easy! this shows another huge difference between multiply and the rest of the social networking/blogging world. on multiply, things are integrated so well that you end up having conversations in a way that you can't on most social networking sites (either because you're not alerted when there's a reply to your reply, or you have to go to another person's blog to see their reply to your blog, etc.). the staff at multiply have made conversations online work more like they do in the real world. (and with LiveReplies, you can even have those conversations in real time, right in the reply section of your blog! who needs IM?)
and their customer service ROCKS!!!!! we recently had several people flood in from yahoo 360 and the mantra i keep hearing them repeat is, "OMG! the staff actually heard our requests! they actually care about us here!"
i really believe that when there's a shake-out in the 2.0 world, multiply is going to be one of the few sites left standing.
Posted by: barefootmeg | December 8, 2007 4:25 AM@barefootmeg customer service is going to be big in this next phase of the social network world.
Great article Marshall, I can count on you to find news even on a Friday night! You are hardcore man! :)
Rex
Posted by: Rex Dixon | December 8, 2007 6:15 AMThe impressive aspect of multiplys size and growth is that all the special pirvacy-controls it had from the beginning are working against the viral effects other socialnetworks can count on.
In more than one aspect multiply is the antimyspace.
I just wish facebook would add some of those granular privacy-controls.
Posted by: marcel weiss | December 8, 2007 6:55 AMThanks for the writeup Marshall! I'd like to point out one more key thing that distinguishes our "news feed" from Facebook's. Theirs is an activity log that lets you know what your contacts have done recently, whether its meaningful (e.g. posting an album) or not (e.g. added an application). Multiply's follows a message board paradigm. It not only lets users know when there's new photos, videos or blogs from the people in their network, but also when there are new replies to that content. This fosters ongoing discussion among the people from all corners of your life around your content. Ultimately, it is these discussions that make Multiply so engaging for our users.
Posted by: David Hersh | December 8, 2007 7:00 AMMarshall, you are indeed amazing...
thanks for a great post.
regards,
Posted by: Graeme Thickins | December 8, 2007 7:18 AMGraeme
Hmmm....I'm still trying to find a good social network for people in my age range (40-55).
Posted by: Shepard | December 8, 2007 9:46 AMUm...Multiply gets somewhere between 500k-1mil uniques a day. I really don't think there is a comparison.
Posted by: RealityCheck | December 8, 2007 10:07 AM@ Shepard: Multiply isn't necessarily *geared* toward any age. My experience has been that the site appeals to mature people of any age. Yes, there are still people there that like blinky, flashy, gaudy things on their page. But it's very easy to ignore them and stick just to your mature friends and family. I encourage you to check it out! And for a helping hand, look for the user support group -- http://usersupport.multiply.com -- where users help users (and the multiply staff occasionally traipses through and helps as well). :-)
Posted by: barefootmeg | December 8, 2007 10:37 AMI signed up with Multiply years ago (2004 or 2005?) and it was even then, the best designed social networking site out there. I visited my profile again, which has been inactive for a while. The design is still much better than anyone else's. Maybe it's time to start using Multiply again.
Posted by: Esme Vos | December 8, 2007 3:23 PMi just barely got started on myspace a couple of months ago. i guess i was the last person in the world to sign up. if there are hot chicks on multiply, i may give it a shot :)
Posted by: dan | December 9, 2007 3:02 AMInteresting that this comparison "review" includes links to Multiply, but not to Facebook.
Posted by: tommyduncn | December 10, 2007 8:03 AMShepard check out www.vois.com for some reason they haven't covered this site here yet, but I am sure they will as it grows. It is definitely one that gets overlooked but has great features geared to grown ups.
Posted by: Lapp | December 10, 2007 8:20 AM