The Multiply Blog

We told you that it was coming.
We showed you that it was coming.
And now, at long last, it's here.

We've been hard at work lately (well, harder than usual), burning the midnight oil and whatnot in preparation for today, the day that will be forever known as... The Day We Released a Giant Overhaul of Multiply.

This is a great day for us; we're proud to show off what's been keeping us up at night, what's kept us pale and vitamin D-deficient as a result of being cooped up indoors, and caused us to neglect our pet rocks to the point where they've all but shriveled up and died. But today isn't our day.

It's yours, dear Multiply users. Whether you've been with us from the beginning or if you were just invited last week, you'll notice that this is a major update for us, the biggest we've rolled out to date. You've most likely already noticed the changes to our page layout and color scheme, but that's not even half the story -- there's more to the new Multiply than just a pretty face. It'd be irresponsible of us to get you hyped up over an update without adding loads of new stuff.

If this all seems a bit perplexing to you, take a deep breath and read on.

Getting around

• New & Improved Homepage. Your home page is your brand-new starting point at Multiply. When you sign in, you'll see a quick rundown of new messages, photos, videos and upcoming events from your contacts, and even a list of tags being used by all the people in your network.
• Never Get Lost Again. We hear that leaving a trail of breadcrumbs is great for finding your way out of a spooky forest, but it works equally well for navigating Multiply. When viewing another user's site, you'll find a "trail" of links at the top of each page showing you how you arrived where you currently are, making it incredibly easy to retrace your steps should you get lost and need to find your way back.
• Navigation Made Easy. When viewing your own pages or changing your settings, the links you need most are right at your fingertips -- down the left side of every page. If you still find yourself lost, the compass is on us. For more information, see our recent post, Streamlining and Simplifying Navigation.
  
• It's All Just Text to Us. To further simplify your Multiply experience, we've removed Recipes, Links and Market from the drop-down "Post" menu. If you've posted recipes, links or market items before, those options will still be there for you, and nothing is going to happen to ones that you've already posted. We encourage you to use the Blog feature to post recipes, links and whatever else strikes your fancy (the great American novel?) for all the world -- or just a couple of friends -- to see.
  
  Having these broken up into separate categories was really just legacy from a time before we offered tagging. Tagging content with descriptive tags (e.g., "recipe," "link," "for sale") will make it just as easy for others to find your content, and is a much more powerful way to organize a wide variety of content types. Besides, eliminating cut-and-dry categories reminds us of the possibilities of the wide variety of material that can be shared via blog posts.
  

Keeping in touch

• Comments Come A-Live. Live Replies^TM is your new option for quickly posting and viewing new comments added to content on Multiply. Comments you leave on posts will appear immediately, as will comments left by others while you're viewing the post. That's right, there's no need to refresh the page. Comments simply appear as they're posted, similar to how IM or a chat room works.
• Since You've Been Gone. Get up to date with what's new and ignore what isn't. When viewing your messages, you can now choose to automagically view unread messages by using the "What You've Missed" view, which can be found under the "Explore" drop-down menu.
• Since You've Been Gone, part deux. Enable the "Always jump to new (unread) replies" option under My Messages setup to be automatically taken to new replies when viewing a thread you've previously seen. Read what you need, not what you don't.
• Popular Tags. This gives you a quick rundown of the tags being used most frequently by the people in your network, enabling you to quickly and easily find what you're looking for. (You can find this on your home page, as well as in the "Explore" drop-down menu.) Multiply is the only place you can see popular tags for your network or just your contacts. Browsing your network by tags is a great way to get a broader view of what the people you know are interested in... and remember that tagging your own content on Multiply not only makes it easier for others to find, but also adds value to your network as a whole!
• Click Post and Hold Your Breath. After you make a new blog post, we'll give you the complete rundown of who will be able to see it, how they can find it, how you'll be notified of comments posted to it. If you're already familiar with these concepts... great! Check the "Skip this page" box, click the button below and we'll never lecture you about it again.

In other news...

• Hands-Free Viewing. When viewing a photo album, click the "slideshow" link to view all photos in that album. Set the speed you'd like, then kick back and enjoy. A bowl of popcorn always goes well with a long set of photos -- and hey -- you won't have to worry about getting your keyboard greasy!
• Contacts and Groups get their own pages. Now it's much more obvious where to find your contacts and groups. Before, they were listed on the "Network" page. Now they each have their own separate page, called: "My Contacts" and "My Groups".
• User Search: On the Move. The "Find Users" is moving up in the world... to its new home at the top of the "My Contacts" page. It likes being there, we like it there and we think you will too.
• Making Posting Simple. To further streamline the process of posting new content to Multiply, we've hidden a few posting options (like disabling notifications and comments on your posts) by default. If you'd like the full array of posting options always available at your fingertips, simply enable Advanced Posting. (You'll find it under My Settings.)

Didn't we tell you we've been busy?

Once again, thank you for sticking with us and enjoying our service as we continue working to keep Multiply the best place online to share your content -- your life -- with those closest to you.