The Myriad International Holdings unit of Naspers has acquired a controlling interest in social networking and shopping site operator Multiply, we’ve learned.
Multiply will continue to operate under the same management team.
This company was originally founded in 2004 and raised $26.6 million in venture capital funding over the past few years in a bid to compete against the likes of MySpace and, later, Facebook and Twitter in the social media space. → Read More
A year ago we modeled out the true value of various social networks based on the idea that users in high-value online advertising markets like Japan, the UK and the U.S. were worth more (financially speaking) than those in lower value online advertising markets. Facebook had recently become the largest worldwide social network in terms of users, but based on our model MySpace was still by far the most valuable social network.
We’ve now remodeled social network valuations based on current user numbers and Facebook’s most recent $10 billion valuation. The results are dramatically different.
Based on the original year-old model, if Facebook was worth $15 billion (their then-current valuation), MySpace, with far more U.S. users, was worth nearly $20 billion:
Our model takes Comscore data for available countries and regions. We’ve graphed each of 26 well known social networks with the data we have been able to collect. We’ve then calculated the average advertising spend (estimated by PriceWaterhouseCoopers in a recent report) for each person online in each of those countries. For example, in the U.S., the total 2008 estimated Internet advertising spend is $25.2 billion. We’ve divided that by the number of people online in the U.S. according to Comscore (191 million), to get an average Internet spend per person of $132. View the raw data and calculations here.
The U.S., by the way, is only the 4th most valuable market per Internet user, trailing The UK ($213), Australia ($148) and Denmark ($144).
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. → Read More
Photo-sharing on the Web keeps getting more popular as people transfer more of their digital photos from their the black holes of their computer hard drives to social networks where their friends and family can actually see them. Although Facebook Photos has emerged as the largest photo-sharing service in terms of users and is one of the fastest-growing of any size, it is still not the largest by the sheer number of images that it stores.
That honor, for the moment, goes to ImageShack, which currently hosts 20 billion images, I’ve confirmed with the company (for more background on ImageShack, read this post). Facebook holds 15 billion photos, according to a spokesperson there. But it should catch up by the end of the year. Facebook users are adding photos at a rate of 850 million photos a month, compared to 100 million photos a month by ImageShack users. Good thing Facebook just fixed its storage architecture to be able to handle the bigger load. → Read More
Philippines-based media company ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation has paid $5 million for a 5% stake in Multiply, the media-centric social network with a userbase primarily composed of adults. The investment pegs Multiply’s valuation at $100 million, which is within range (though on the lower end) of our social network valuations based on past deals. ABS-CBN also has the right to purchase up to 10% of Multiply within the next two years.
Multiply has a significant presence in the Philippines, with around 3 million users. ABS-CBN plans to capitalize on its investment through advertising, and by eventually offering a mobile version of the site for users in the Philippines. For more, read the ABS-CBN announcement here. → Read More
Multiply, a social network largely geared towards adults, has launched a new set of printing features that allow members to order professional prints of their photos directly from their online albums and those of their friends.
Available photo products include photo books, calendars, cards, and standard prints. The site uses an intuitive drag-and-drop interface to place photos, allowing users to cull shots from both their own online albums and those of their friends. Users can collaboratively put together a photo book, but are also free to copy and manipulate each album to their liking (for example, parents could work together to create a photo book of their little league team, customizing the cover of each printed book to feature a photo of their own child). → Read More
We’ve received confirmation that Microsoft is handing over the reins to its MSN Groups property to the social network Multiply. Microsoft is planning to release a new service called Windows Live Groups in November, and apparently doesn’t want to compete with itself. Oddly enough, Microsoft has chosen not to allow groups to transition between the two services, and instead is going to offer a migration tool that will allow users to take groups over to Multiply, which currently bills itself as the world’s 8th largest social network.
The rumor was originally reported earlier today after a series of emails were posted to a MSN Discussion newsgroup, and has since been confirmed by both Multiply and Microsoft through a blog post. → Read More
Multiply, a media-heavy social network geared towards adults, has introduced a new backup system that will backup users’ videos and photos at full resolution. The premium service will cost users $20 per year for an unlimited amount of storage. As part of the new release, all users (even unpaid ones) will be given access to Multiply’s new media upload application that’s based on Adobe’s AIR platform (you’ll be able to use it on Windows, Mac, and Linux). The application will monitor designated folders on a user’s computer, and will automatically upload new photos and video in the background as soon as they’re added. These files will be housed in an online “Media Locker”, from which users will be able to share and manipulate their media without having to wait for it to upload. Paid users will get to keep this media online in its original format indefinitely, while free users will see their content expire after 30 days, unless they share it in an album on the social network. Given the amount of media that gets uploaded to social networks like Multiply, it’s not surprising that they’re trying to capitalize on it. But because it only backs up photos and video, it seems like a strange choice for a backup solution – users might be better off going with all-purpose backup services like Mozy or Apple’s Time Machine. Then again, if users are going to be uploading their media anyway, it’s infinitely better than nothing. CrunchBase Information Multiply Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Is MySpace worth $3 billion, or $20 billion? It depends on how you value a user. It’s time to start comparing the big global social networks on something other than unique visitors and page views. I believe an effective way to value a particular user is based on the average Internet advertising spend per person in the country they live in. The higher the spend, the more value the social network can get out of the user by serving them advertising and other products. That means that, for now, users in a handful of key countries are worth far more in terms of revenue potential than those in the rest of the world. We’ve begun to build out a model that looks at social network usage by country/region and compares that to available data on total Internet advertising spend in each of those countries. The model is then able to turn an apples-to-oranges comparison into an apples-to-apples comparison. The early results are surprising. The ultimate financial value of any asset is, ultimately, what the market will pay for it. We have only a few data points to help us: Facebook, Bebo and LinkedIn are worth $15 billion, $850 million and $1 billion, respectively, based on relatively recent valuations (although only Bebo was actually sold completely; Facebook and LinkedIn raised investments at those valuations). The last valuation of MySpace was just $580 million, back in 2005 when it was acquired by News Corp. Which valuation is most “correct?” It’s hard to say based on the data that’s been available to date, which is mostly just aggregate page view and unique visitor numbers from Comscore and other services. Based on worldwide unique visitors, for example, Facebook recently overtook MySpace to become the “largest” social network. According to raw worldwide user number, the biggest social networks are Facebook, Myspace, Hi5, Friendster, Orkut and Bebo, in that order. But when you apply the model that we’ve created below, which takes into account where users live, the rankings change substantially. MySpace is by far the most valuable social network based on available data. A competitor like Orkut is worth only 1/20th of MySpace, even though it has nearly 1/4 the number of users. Properly Ranking Social Networks Our model takes Comscore data for available countries and regions. We’ve graphed each of 26 well known social networks with the data we have been able to collect. → Read More
Multiply has been growing rather quietly internationally. The social media aggregator now has 7 million registered users and 10.5 million monthly unique visitors according to their internal numbers, nearly triple their 2006 traffic. Comscore’s most recent numbers show 12.5 million uniques for September. The service acts like a meta social network where users can collect and share content from multiple social sites (photos, video, blogs). See our earlier comparison with Vox. Users post 1.25 million photos, 16,000 videos and 55,000 blog entries daily. However, while the U.S. is home to the largest share of their registered users, most of their traffic is international. The Philippines is one of the most pronounced examples of their large international following. Alexa ranks Multiply as the 5th largest site in the Philippines – with more than 2 million unique monthly visitors. We had earlier reported that 39% of the site’s traffic comes from the Philippines. Therefore it’s no surprise that they’ve managed to land a multi-year ad deal with one of the Philippine’s largest networks, ABS-CBN. ABS-CBN has 67 televisions stations, 19 radio stations, 30 websites and reaches 97% of the Filipinos with televisions. Under terms of the agreement, ABS-CBN interactive will sell advertising and mobile services for Multiply’s Filipino users, with the two companies sharing revenues. The deal highlights the importance of international markets U.S. press often take for granted. Sites like Friendster and Orkut have found large international followings while their U.S. markets are dormant. With a global internet, foreign markets are expected to become even more important in the future. According to research firm Datamonitor Plc., by the end of this year, Asia will account for 35% of the world’s social networking users, with 28% of users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, 25% in North America, and 12% in the Caribbean and Latin America. Once again, startups concerned about getting big may want to get international. CrunchBase Information Multiply Friendster Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
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. → Read More
Today’s the day – SuperBowl XLI. Hundreds of millions of people around the world will eat junk food, drink beer, and watch the best television advertising all year interrupted periodically with a football game. Six startups (Meebo, Meez, Multiply, Plaxo, RockYou and Technorati) who can’t afford the $2.5 million plus for a thirty second spot during the game got together to produce low-budget “SuperBowl” ads and put them on YouTube. Some of them are pretty entertaining. Others, not so much. We’ve embedded all of them below and have a poll to see which one you like the best. By the way, last year’s real SuperBowl ads are still up on Google Video at video.google.com/superbowl.html. I assume Google will replace those ads with SuperBowl XLI ads tomorrow. Yahoo will also be hosting the actual SuperBowl ads once the games starts at Yahoo Video. My favorite “startup” ad is Technorati, although they cheated by using footage from one of my favorite movies. Plaxo and Meebo are tied for second place. The ads and poll are below, in this order: Meebo, Meez, Multiply, Plaxo, RockYou and Technorati: → Read More
Privacy-centric multimedia social networking service Multiply is releasing what it calls version 3.0 of its service tonight; Multiply targets users who are interested in sharing content with people they know in real life and exercising strong privacy controls. Privacy in social networking is the big selling point for SixApart’s newest service, Vox, as well. Vox is also strong on media sharing; users of both services can post text, photos and video in one place. Now that Vox has finally launched after a long beta period and Multiply is coming out with new features and a new version, it’s a good time to ask…which one is better? If you’re looking for beautiful templates to chose between, a young hip crowd to network with and a company most likely to support emerging technology trends requested by early-adopter type users then Vox is the way to go. If you seek logical and robust privacy controls and shelter from an online world of strangers then Multiply is better designed. I prefer Multiply’s handling of media items and news feeds from your network of contacts. Vox is beautiful, Multiply is more functional. Vox is the newest product of SixApart, owners of LiveJournal, MovableType and Typepad. Our previous Vox coverage is here. Multiply is privately owned and recently received $6 million in funding. Multiply is more than 2 years old and claims more than 3 million registered users. Privacy Settings and Content Distribution Privacy settings are the key issue according to both companies. Posts on Vox can be made visible to anyone, to just friends, to just family, to friends and family or just to you yourself. Multiply allows more granular control: your friends, their friends and their friends, your family, their family and their family, your professional contacts, their professional contacts and their professional contacts, only direct contacts in either friend, family or professional contexts or only particular individuals added from contact lists importable from outside software. That’s quite a list of options and the interface makes it very workable. If you want to share something only with your family and their family, but not one more circle of family – well then I guess you’re out of luck. Sliders instead of check boxes could be useful. Multiply says that there are many situations in which you’d like to share content with people one or two steps removed from your circle of contacts, but you → Read More
Online social network Multiply has closed a Series A funding round with $5 million from Transcosmos and $1 million from the company’s founders. Multiply is a service that filters all networking functions, from highlighted users to visible tag clouds, through a proximity filter with a slider. In other words, users determine whether they want to view information about people just on their contacts list, who are friends of a friend, etc. As new social networking sites go, I’d say this one has pretty fair odds of surviving. Since launching in March 2004, the system has nearly 3 million registered users and recently expanded with a localized version for Japan. The company says it will use the new funds to expand features, functionality, marketing and international presence. With so many social networking sites on the web, marketing is going to be essential. Founder and President Peter Pezaris was previously CBS SportsLine.com’s President of Operations and Product Development and oversaw operations of nfl.com, pgatour.com and cbs.sportsline.com. Transcosmos adds Multiply to a portfolio that includes Ask/Bloglines, RealNetworks, Hipcast/Audioblog, Pheedo, Edgio and others. Multiply aims to be distinct by focusing closely on limiting interactions to people who are already connected to each other. Beyond that, though, the system has a number of interesting features like Ajax message boards and a forum organized by user attention in addition to thread update currency. The message boards display new comments on the screen of each party in a conversation in near real time and the forum will prioritize threads by whether a user has read them before – so a thread isn’t brought to the top of your view of the forum just because one of only two people who care about it has made a new post. There’s RSS all over the site and it’s got a nice feel to it. If the new funding gets leveraged well, Multiply may be able to grab a bigger piece of the social networking pie. → Read More
