Multiply Charges Users for Premium Storage

Triston McIntyre,

on June 25, 2008,

Multiply Charges Users for Premium Storage We see a lot of different approaches to becoming unique in social media. This is one of those moves that I'm just not sure what I think about it yet. Multiply, a reasonably large social network directed towards adults, is now offering premium storage for photos and videos for the price of $19.95 annually.

The new premium storage will be called "digital scrapbook," and is based on some pretty nifty functionality. An Adobe Air application will upload videos and photos stored locally automatically to each users' individual "media locker." That Air application will be available to all users, not just adopters of the digital scrapbook. Those that do adopt the premium functionality will be able to upload not only standard video and picture content, but high-resolution images and videos up to 20 minutes in length.

For those who aren't familiar with Multiply, this particular social network is geared specifically towards being a close community for real friends and loved ones, not at all of the same scope and size of the bigger players like Facebook and MySpace. For that reason, Multiply focuses more on media from the aspect of sharing pictures and videos with those those close people.

With that said, I'm still a little unsure about the decision to offer more storage for a price. My first instinct would be that Multiply should try to monetize the service completely with a tweak to advertising, or whatever profit model Multiply has, so every user can partake. Though Multiply isn't wanting its user base to explode, winning more customers means a greater web and social presence; paid services aren't very attractive to new members.

Beyond that, there are plenty of fantastic platforms for storing and uploading large numbers and qualities of videos and photos, such as Flickr and Viddler. Though those platforms aren't linked in a single location, they are free.

Then again, many users aren't ready to live a highly-connected life on multiple social media platforms. Maybe Multiply is making a strong move in capitalizing on current trends. I can't really say either way, because I think the feature has the potential to succeed. But I'm indifferent, as I'm not (and don't plan on being) a user of Multiply anytime soon. My only guess is that the community might appreciate the added storage as a free feature, like the Air uploading application, if Multiply changed its profit model so users wouldn't have to front the bill.

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18 Comments (Subscribe to rss)

Mark Salinas - June 25, 2008 at 03:47 pm PDT

I honestly can say that you have some of the best reads.
Triston McIntyre - June 25, 2008 at 03:56 pm PDT

thanks, Mark Much appreciated.
Michael Gersh - June 25, 2008 at 03:57 pm PDT

Triston,

Thank you very much for writing about Multiply. While you write…

“Beyond that, there are plenty of fantastic platforms for storing and uploading large numbers and qualities of videos and photos, such as Flickr and Viddler. Though those platforms aren’t linked in a single location, they are free.”

…I would like to point out that for free Flickr only allow you access to your last 200 photos. Beyond that it is $25 / year for a Flickr pro account. For free, Multiply users can upload and share an unlimited number of photos and videos.

I also wouldn’t underestimate the value of being “linked in a single location.” Besides an easy to use interface for sharing (and storing) photos and videos, there’s blogging too. Most importantly all of these are tied into our social network driven “Inbox”…a feed that doesn’t just provide you updates when your friends and family add new photos (or videos or blog entries) but it lets you (and everyone with access to a particular item) know when people reply to them. That latter component contributes to greater and more in-depth discussions than available anywhere else. While there are plenty of people that may prefer mash-ing up a half dozen different services, Multiply is significantly easier to use, and perhaps more powerful as well.

The Multiply Premium service is about much more than just storing media. The service provides a permanent, easy-to-use, central home for all your memories – your media, your blog entries, and perhaps most importantly- all the discussions by your friends and family about your media.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you’d like more information about Multiply and the new features. Thanks again.

Michael Gersh
VP of Sales and Marketing
Multiply, Inc.
http://michaelg.multiply.com
Triston McIntyre - June 25, 2008 at 04:18 pm PDT

I’m not disagreeing with you, Michael. Flickr Pro does cost, and a pretty penny at that. I don’t underestimate the value of being linked in to one location…if it weren’t important, the social world wouldn’t be bickering over the usefulness of platforms like FriendFeed There is definitely value in that. I’m really only calling into question how broadly the pay service will be adopted. The idea is fantastic, though. Good luck to you!
Ari Herzog - June 25, 2008 at 06:02 pm PDT

Based on your suggestion, Triston, I created a test account at multiply.com and it seems to be best targeted at high school and college kids who currently have Myspace profiles. It’s a portal; err, the site allows one to create a portal for whatever he/she wants to share.

It’s too elementary for me. I prefer to have my blog in one place (through a custom domain at that, which I don’t believe Multiply offers) and control of my template design (which I am betting Multiply can’t offer). I like to not just share photos on Flickr, but interact with people in different “groups” which I didn’t see on Multiply, which is more like Myspace/Facebook with few plugins. Maybe the site will expand in the future.

But here’s something that caused me to wonder about ethics: All of my Flickr photos have a Creative Commons license to pseudo-prohibit people from using without attribution. I can’t think of many websites that allow what Multiply allows: I can type in my root Flickr page and all of my photos on that page are downloaded into a new Multiply album.

My teenage and early 20-something cousins would like it. New bloggers might like it. But for me, it’s too…simple.
Tom Valdez - June 26, 2008 at 10:17 am PDT

Ari, on the contrary, you can customize a Multiply site. In fact, there are several ways; you can choose from a list of themes, use one of the provided themes as a base theme and use custom css to create your own theme, and also decide if you want to hide certain sections of you main page, such as the blog section, video, guestbook, etc. You can also set each section to your own preference, for example, the photo section on the “home” page on your site can be customized to show the most recent albums, selected albums, your top 5, 10 or choose to show them as a list rather than thumbnails. This only scratches the surface of customizing your multiply site.

As far as groups go, maybe you missed the links on the very top of the page which reads “Inbox, My Site, Contacts, and Groups”. One reason this is NOT compared to Myspace or Facebook, is that you can search by a members name, multiply ID or email vs the others who allow you to search by zip code and age for those like college and high schoolers who are only looking to “hook up”. The average age group reached by Multiply is somewhere between 18-35yrs. I dont know how you can say its geared towards high school and college students when the message is loud and clear “share your life with your friends AND family”. Where’s the “superpokes” and “vampire bits”? I know where, on those other guys’ networks, thats where. At least on Muliply you cant be bought or turned into a sheep. Clearly, its not for children, but that not to say they shouldnt be apart of Multiply, its a family network.

There is a huge difference between Multiply and those other guys if you only take the time to look. One major difference, other than the look and functionality, and this reaches back to the “group” issue you mentioned, is that there are groups dedicated for users who make suggestions to the developing team at Multiply. If youre a user and have an idea for something new, you can post it to this group and have an open discussion to explore your suggestion. Another nice group is a customer service based group where people answer any questions you may have, this is in addition to emailing customer service.

So, Multiply goes well beyond expectations when it comes to even the simple things such as what the user thinks and how they take care of them.

Rather than go down the list of things that make Multiply better than everyone else, in ways those sites are finally getting around to applying, you should play around on your Multiply account more and see for yourself how interacting with your friends and family is even better at Multiply.
Ari Herzog - June 26, 2008 at 10:46 am PDT

Thanks for the response, Tom. I suppose I’m confused to the site’s purpose; this thread implies an alternative to Flickr for photograph storage. But like you allude, the site allows blogs, calendaring, and other forms of social networking.

Who do you see as your competition? I have about 300 friends on Facebook; about 95% are people I know in person who are real friends, acquaintances, former classmates, etc. I don’t foresee a chunk of them moving to Multiply.com for the single reason that most of them are on Facebook because, well, it’s the place to be. I’m in my early 30s and most of my Facebook friends are age 30-plus. What’s wrong with “poking” someone else? It’s no different than sending a cellular text message, “What’s up?”

I’ll wait it out, see how Multiply is accepted. But for me, I’m still skeptical.
Maria - June 26, 2008 at 11:24 am PDT

If i remember correctly, when Facebook began, you could only signup if you had a college school emial address. They say how they were losing out and opened it for everyone. I wont even mention how childish Facebook and Myspace is, you can see just by the setup, functionality and all those silly apps they have. If i want to communicate with friends and family, Ill so with a thread that has meaning and substance, rather than tagging someone wall.
Miukku - July 01, 2008 at 12:35 pm PDT

Oh god. Not another one…

They’re probably just reselling someone else’s solution. You see this all the time and it really gets old.

At first, it’ll be really popular… then people will start complaining about how the recovery application sucks… because the company doesen’t understand the implementation. Then, when you call in, the tech support will suck because it’s prbably a third party company that has to outsoource their own tech support to yet another company. So now you’ve got 3 degrees of separation between you and your support.

Then they’ll start losing money and the company will stop caring, leaving their current customers screwed and holding the bag.

You don’t buy a car from the supermarket, and you don’t buy backup solutions from a social media network.

Backup is complex and difficult. Leave it to the specialists.
Archana - January 26, 2009 at 03:42 pm PDT

Hi!
This is Archana over at BigTent. I moved my multiples group from MSN to BigTent in the summer of 2007 and we have loved all the added benefits, including one-on-one support to get up and running.

If you’re looking for a new home for your group, BigTent Groups compares well to MSN Groups. We have forums, photos, reviews, files, email capability, and member management. We would be thrilled to support your community! Here’s a blog post about how to move your group over: http://blog.bigtent.com/2009/01/19/bigtent-welcomes-msn-groups-leaders/
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