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Multiply closing social networking, focus on eCommerce; backup your data soon!

UPDATE: THE MULTIPLY EXPORTER TOOL IS NOW AVAILABLE TILL DECEMBER 1 2012!

Video via Adobo Magazine:

UPDATE: Jack Madrid, a friend and country manager of Multiply has posted a much clearer statement on the current state of Multiply. A lot of people were confused with the “We are sorry” note earlier this morning (and I don’t blame them) because it was rather vague. Jack’s post is more concise and reassuring of Multiply’s growth.

Again I will copy + paste:

Dear Multiply Users, Merchants, and Shoppers,

In the past two years or so, Multiply has fully shifted its direction towards supporting and cultivating an already thriving e-commerce community. Since then, it has been our mantra to continuously pave the way for e-commerce in the Philippines while empowering the enterprising Filipino.

With everything that we’ve done to make your Multiply the way it is today, there’s no time for us to step on the brakes, in fact, our new journey has just started and we can assure you we’re all excited.

That being said, in our efforts to further strengthen the Multiply platform and our services as the largest social marketplace in the country, starting December 1, 2012, we will fully transition to e-commerce and focus all of our initiatives in improving just that.

To our valued Multiply users in the social media platform, we encourage you to download your photos, blogs and videos before December 1, 2012. On the other hand, we are pleased to inform our existing and potential sellers and buyers that you will not be affected by this transition at any time in the future.

We’re looking forward to your continuous support.

Thank you,

Jack Madrid
Country Manager
Multiply Philippines

EDIT: Changed wording of some paragraphs to better explain the shift. The original text I wrote gave the impression that the whole operation would be closing down (which was not intended). They are closing Multiply in its current form as a social networking site but will relaunch it in December as an eCommerce platform — the specifics of which we do not know. I have reached out to Stefan and awaiting a response.

Multiply has announced that it is closing operations in its current form; will focus on eCommerce

.

A few weeks ago I attended an intimate press conference for popular social networking turned eCommerce site, Multiply. In that conference I met Stefan Magdalinski (@smagdali) the current CEO of Multiply. He revealed to us that Multiply will be bringing in new features that should mature by the end of 2012. As it turns out, these features include MULTIPLY ANNOUNCING THAT THEY ARE SHUTTING DOWN OPERATIONS in its current form. This means that Multiply will continue, but as a 100% eCommerce site as mentioned below. Actually, we don’t know for sure what this truly means. What we’re sure of is that Multiply as we know it will be gone. Here’s a copy + paste of the entire landing page when you point your browsers to the site:

Hello. Stefan here, writing you from Multiply HQ in Jakarta, Indonesia. As most of you are probably aware, Multiply’s mission has evolved over the past year and a half to become the biggest and most beloved ecommerce marketplace in two very exciting markets, Indonesia and the Philippines. As our focus has shifted, we have reviewed all of our operations, and made some decisions that will affect everyone here. From December 1st, we will unfortunately no longer be able to support Multiply in its current form – notably we will be removing the social networking and content sharing part of Multiply (photos, videos, blogs, social messaging, etc.). We have decided to discontinue providing and hosting these services, as we have concluded that other Internet sites who are committed to social networking services will do a better job serving you than we can. For our existing users of social networking features, we will be providing easy ways for you to either download your stuff (photos, blogs, content, etc), or migrate it to other online services. We’ll announce the precise details shortly. It will be your choice whether to download, migrate or just let your content lapse (and get deleted). For our existing ecommerce users (both buyers and sellers) in Indonesia and the Philippines, there will be no action required. Regarding any existing Multiply Premium subscriptions we will refund any unused balance, and apologize for any inconvenience this will cause. Please contact customer service to request a refund. Note that this is for Multiply Premium, not the ecommerce related Multiply Trust product. I am aware of how disruptive this news may be, and understand the disappointment that it may cause. Ultimately this was a business decision, critical to our to success moving forward. Instead, we are excited to pursue our own mission to give the 350 million consumers in Indonesia and the Philippines a great way to buy and sell items online. Our singular focus now is for Multiply to retain its status as a vibrant e-commerce destination in Southeast Asia in the years ahead. I suspect that many of you will not like this news, and am sorry to have to deliver it now. I hope that you will be able to understand the reasons for our decision and thank you for being a part of the Multiply community over the past eight years. Stef

As read above, you will be able to export all your data to other services. This news comes as a sad close to one of the biggest online properties in the Philippines. It is hopefully also a good thing to help push Multiply forward in the eCommerce space in the same way that Friendster transformed itself into a site for social gaming. It seems they are going head on to compete with Rocket Internet’s Zalora and Lazada if I am not mistaken.

By Jayvee Fernandez

Jayvee Fernandez is a tech enthusiast, EAN certified SCUBA Diver and underwater photographer based in Metro Manila, Philippines. His photos and videos have appeared in various international and local publications including Random House Germany, Discovery Channel Canada, and CNN.

28 replies on “Multiply closing social networking, focus on eCommerce; backup your data soon!”

Ey Jayvee,

Thanks for the post. Though, if I may correct you, we’re not Owned by MOL. we’re owned by Naspers who also owns Sulit and Level Up (yup they’re our sister companies in the PH. Besides us 3 here in the PH, they own some more e-commerce sites globally. Check it out here: http://www.naspers.com/company-structure.php

Cheers dude!

P.S. Hope you can change your title because it’s a bit misleading. People think we’re already closing down, when we’re not. We’re alive, and kicking, and very much excited for the upcoming changes. 🙂

Does Jack Madrid actually know how to download photos from Multiply.com? It’s quite a challenge if you ask me.

I do hope that Stefan Magdalinski makes sure that free-account users are able to easily secure their original photos in one click.

thanks for posting this! made me understand what was going on so much better. it’s so sad to see multiply go 🙁 my first “formal” foray into blogging was with multiply. it was such an easy and friendly platform. i’ve blogged from 2007-2009 and i want to keep all my posts and pics intact. will be looking forward to those export tools soon.

Dear Multiply friends,
We have heard the news about Multiply closing down part of their online photo and video sharing services in a few months time.
Don’t panic! We are here to help!
We offer a wide range of services such as: blog platform, photo and video sharing which we think will attract your attention.
Sign up for free and benefit of 200MB of upload per month.
If you require more needs we offer for less than $2.50 a month a PRO account which includes:
– Unlimited upload and storage of your photos, videos, and documents.
– HD Video up to 500MB each
– The possibility to download your original files
– Ad free throughout the site
By joining ipernity you will be able to share your photos, videos and documents with whoever you want thanks to our filtering system.
To start you off we are offering you and your Multiply friends 1 month free of charge of a PRO account.
This means you will be able to transfer all your content from Multiply to ipernity and not lose any of them.
They will be safe and sound.
And there is no need to worry about space as you will be unlimited, yes that’s right!
Hold on there is more good news for you! In a few weeks time we will be launching a new version of ipernity with even more new possibilities.
After you have signed up on http://www.ipernity.com please contact us via this contact form: http://www.ipernity.com/help/support?url=%2F
with the reference Multiply so we can credit you with a PRO account for 1 month free trial!

Looking forward to seeing you very soon!

The ipernity Team

Hi, is there already a tool to download/migrate all videos and photos? It would be great if there’s a migrate-to-Facebook feature and all captions/album titles will also be migrated along with the pictures. Thanks!

anyone can help me, at the moment i can not reach to multiply.com to back up my blogs and photos. I’m in Viet Nam now, how should i do?

if you’re a Multiply user in need of a new home for your photos & video clips, try our free service at https://pixi.me/ (powered by Pinoys!) – been around since 2004, no ads, no data-lockin and we use Menalto Gallery 2 (open source) as our platform.

I was a bit surprised when I can’t see multiply.com blogs anymore but they are still cache in Google search engine. I didn’t know when they closed the international version of multiply until I saw your blog. Almost 3 months ago and I only knew it yesterday. Thanks for your post!

Hi,

I was so shocked and still shocked that my multiply was deleted… i haven’t had a chance to transfer all my pictures and saved all the stories that i wrote. is there any chance that i can get all the picture back?

Hello dears,
I was so shocked and still shocked that my multiply was deleted… i haven’t had a chance to transfer all my pictures and saved all the stories that i wrote. is there any chance that i can get all the picture back?

Please help me, I have posted 3000 photos about my life, trips, family, and I lost…

Im from Brazil.

Thanks.

Yes, please! Give us another chance to download our pictures! Give us more notice! I have blogs and pictures that are unique to only Multiply! I loved them so. Please tell us how to retrieve these! If you tell us how, I will even sign up and promote your new website! I will give it a try but please let us save our stuff!

Hello! Is there still a way to recover my files from multiply? I wasn’t aware that hey are shutting down. I only found out about it yesterday 🙁 I feel sad because I have lots of pictures there 🙁 Thank you and God bless!

Hi, i migrated my photo’s from MSN Groups toMultiply but now i can not find them anymore… is there an archive? I hope that someone can help me…

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