The Multiply Blog

Ironing Out the Wrinkles: Multiply is for everyone
by Michael Gersh, VP of Sales and Marketing

As most of our users know, Multiply recently received an investment and that news led to some nice press coverage. Some of this coverage has attempted to categorize Multiply as a website for particular age groups. For example, in an article entitled New Social Sites Cater to People of a Certain Age the NY Times grouped us with a few sites that "look like Facebook - with wrinkles" and that we're seeking out "older Internet users."  Another example, which actually contradicts the first, comes from Venturebeat, who writes that Multiply is a "social network aimed at 30-somethings."

We’re certainly happy that these stories covered our funding announcement, but those categorizations are not accurate. Multiply does not target specific age groups at all. In fact, we try hard to make sure the site is age-neutral, as well as gender- and geography-neutral. You can see what I mean by simply comparing our home page to others. Below are portions of screen grabs taken a few days ago (9/19), from the home pages of two other "social networking" sites:

Just by looking at the images, you can instantly determine who these sites are targeting. These are extreme examples of age targeting, however there are other social networking sites that similarly present random head-shots of actual users on their home page, and this can have a similar result in determining who uses those sites. Regardless of whom the site’s features may appeal to, if its userbase grows unevenly (across age or demographic), the random headshots on the home-page will increasingly represent the majority groups, and, in turn, will attract more users from those majority groups while potentially turning off others.

Since Multiply isn't for any specific age group, you won’t see photos of users on our homepage, much less users with "wrinkles." Our message to potential users: when you use Multiply, you’ll only see people – and content – relevant to you based on your real-life relationships – and that is appealing to people of any age.

I understand that journalists want to be able to differentiate the products and companies they write about, but the best way to differentiate Multiply is by the goals it allows users to achieve, in comparison with other sites. For example, both Multiply and YouTube let registered users upload video. But Multiply does not have a page that lets unregistered users view the "Most Viewed" or "Top Rated" videos. And YouTube doesn't have a page that lets a user know when her brother's roommate added a reply to that brother’s video. So if  someone’s goal is to have his video viewed (and commented on) by as many strangers as possible in the whole world, YouTube is probably the way to go. If the goal is sharing and discussing with people you care about, check out Multiply.

Multiply wants to provide users with a powerful communications tool that offers advantages over other communication tools, such as e-mail. For instance, on Multiply you can share media such as photos and videos more elegantly than you can with e-mail. And Multiply lets you share with more of the people you care about - or who care about you. (With e-mail, my sister's friends would never see the pictures I post. With Multiply, and only Multiply, they will – with no extra effort on my part.)

I'm not suggesting that our product has equal appeal across age groups. Younger people, on average, are more comfortable doing things like transferring video from a camera to a web-site than older people are. Younger people are also more likely to want to search through as many random profiles as they can, making new "friends" on-line, and flirting the night away. Knowing that, it makes sense that our product is very appealing to people in their thirties. But that doesn't mean Multiply is meant for people in their thirties. We've got plenty of users younger and older than that, and in ten years, the site will still be useful for all our current users even though they'll be ten years older. The same can't be said for most other social networking sites.

To summarize, I'd like to share a reply added by a Multiply user to  a post on Techcrunch that encapsulates much of what I've just written very succinctly:

I’m not looking for a site that’s going to try to force someone else’s agenda for my age group on me. I want a social site that works and works well. I want a site that’s going to enable me to get my own content out to exactly the people I want it to go out to. And I only want to have to deal with content coming in that I’ve chosen to see. It’s not about the age of the users but the functionality of the site.