Group administrators — and Multiply users of all kinds — that time is finally here. You know, the time at which we tell you that we have new features for you.

So now, we have... no, wait.

Now, you have...

Faster photo album browsing  Multiply has always been a great place to enjoy others' photos (not to mention sharing your own), but doing so has never been quite this much of a breeze. As you browse through a photo album now, you'll notice photos loading pretty much instantly.

Group admin content control  That's right group admins, the feature we recently announced is now available! If you run a group on Multiply, you can choose which kinds of content members can — and can't — share in the group. We really are looking to make your "job" easier. How else can we help?

Quicker replies  If you use the dedicated "reply" links that appear alongside existing replies, you already know how these make it easier for others to follow conversations. Now we've gone and made these even more of a pleasure to use; click one and your reply box will appear instantly! Write your reply, click submit, and you're back to the original post in a snap.

Guestbook pages  Are you really, really, ridiculously popular? Do people use your guestbook like a chat room? Are you sick of having to load every comment every time you view your guestbook? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, you'll be pleased to know that we've made viewing your guestbook a lot easier by dividing it into easy-to-consume pages.

New e-mail alert format  If you receive HTML e-mail alerts, you may have already noticed this one; these alerts now have a fresh new look! (If you don't currently receive e-mail alerts, you can enable them by clicking "settings" followed by "My E-mail Alerts.") Be sure to keep an eye out for the new photo album alerts in particular... the new layout is really nice.

We hope that your enjoyment of these new features ranks right up there with that of your current favorites.
Be sure to let us know if it does (or doesn't), and keep us informed as to how you're using these new features!

Have you ever come across a post that's received quite a few comments, but you can't quite tell who's talking to whom?

Isn't it a bit like being in a big room of people where everyone is involved in their own small conversations... but for some odd reason, aren't necessarily looking at the person they're talking to? For all you know, they could be talking to themselves, the person directly behind them, or someone on the other side of the room.

To apply this metaphor to Multiply, for example, the latest reply at the bottom of the page -- say, the fifteenth -- that simply reads "Cool!" could potentially be posted in reference to the original posting, or something insightful in any of the previous fourteen comments.

How can this sort of thing be avoided? Thanks for asking!
There are two major ways around this:

1. When replying to a specific comment already left on a posting, be sure to use the dedicated "reply" link that you'll find next to the particular comment. (Note the blue links in the screenshot to the right.)
   
   Then, be sure to quote an appropriate portion of the comment to give people an idea of the comment to which you intend to reply. This is polite to do, but not usually necessary when you...
   


2. Use "Threaded" comment view! When you do so, you'll see comments arranged in a logical order, showing you specifically which comments were left in reply to which! You can clearly see that each indented comment is a reply to the next left-most one, often the one above it.
   
   If you've never used it before, it looks a little like this:
   

   

   This is a great way to keep track of conversations, but comments will only appear in this manner if those involved in the conversation used the dedicated reply links mentioned above when posting their replies.
   
   (Additionally, Threaded mode doesn't support Live Replies^TM just yet.)
   

So there you have it. If you have trouble making sense of a conversation, you may want to switch your comment view to "Threaded," at least temporarily. And remember to use those "reply" links when responding to existing comments!