Multiply is Cheap. ABS-CBN is Stupid.
Last year, also-ran social network Multiply stepped into a petty third-world TV network war by entering into an ad deal with Philippine TV station ABS-CBN. Now Multiply gets pwned in that war — literally. ABS-CBN now owns 5% of Multiply, for the ridiculous price of $5 million.
The sad part is, neither company knows what they’re really offering each other aside from five million dollars for three million Filipino Multiply users. Consider the following statement from ABS-CBN Interactive head Paolo Pineda:
Multiply is a natural fit for ABS-CBN. It is the social network that is most consistent to our business model because they have focused on photo, video and blog features compared to the other social networks such as Friendster and Facebook, which focus on connecting friends and running applications… With this investment, we now have a commitment to the social networking industry and we believe it is here to stay.
You don’t want a social network that focuses on connecting friends? Isn’t connecting friends the whole point of a social network? If you want something focused on media, why don’t you just apply for the YouTube partner program through your US office? It would cost you far less than five million dollars, create a new ad revenue stream for your existing shows, and bring you far less PR headaches.
All ABS-CBN is really getting out of this is three million Filipino users, at $1.67 each. ABS-CBN could have probably gotten that and more for free with a YouTube deal, but that’s too far above their heads. They don’t understand things like content superdistribution or audience engagement or viral marketing or customer evangelism or online video. All they understand is buying Filipinos like cheap mindless eyeballs.
I’d hate to be Multiply CEO Pete Pezaris right now. While Mark Zuckerberg rides high on Facebook’s $15 billion valuation, Pete has to convince some third-world TV station that Multiply is even worth $100 million. We always knew Multiply was cheap; now this deal shows us just how cheap.
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And how is social graph data generated? Through socialization, of course. 😛
you are just so bitter… 😀
Multiply is a stupid lame website, people post lists of songs only to show off their song list, you can see the list but you can’t download or even hear them.
Kinda defeats the purpose of a song list, doesn’t it?
Have you tried imeem? They’ve got lots of good songs for streaming there. 🙂
Hey Mike!
Here’s something for the lulz:
http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Multiply
I hope when Pez reads the link, he’ll definitely shat bricks. 😀
“Multiply is populated by idiotic teenagers who spout ‘ZOMG XD XD’ every few minutes.”
“Multiply is also used by companies, groups or radio stations who are too retarded or poor to make their own website so resort to a website children decorate with shiny blinking GIFs.”
Brilliant stuff. 😆
Even though Multiply allows “shopfronts” against their own terms of service, Facebook beat them to a payment solution. Pathetic.