http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/storypage.aspx?StoryID=122306

Multiply, one of the pioneers of the social networking movement, is enjoying a strong following in the Philippines, second only to pioneer Friendster. Countless Filipino users have used Multiply to post pictures, connect with family and friends and even sell goods online.

Recently, Multiply partnered with ABS-CBN Interactive to grow its user base in the Philippines as well as tap into the local advertising community. (Disclosure: abs-cbnNEWS.com is run by ABS-CBN Interactive.)

In an interview with abs-cbnNEWS.com, Multiply president Peter Pezaris and vice-president for business development David Hersh reveal why Filipinos are attracted to Multiply, how they plan to monetize their user base and why the site seems to be attracting an older audience. Interview with David Dizon.

So how do you like the Philippines so far?

David: It’s rainy but very hospitable. We’ve been having a great time. Paolo [Pineda, ABS-CBN Interactive managing director] and the gang have been rolling out the red carpet for us.

What are your plans for the Philippines?

Peter: We are here to announce the launch of our Multiply Philippines partnership with ABS-CBN Interactive and we’ve been invited to come and speak at the World Marketing Conference on Friday.

David: We think there’s a great opportunity to come meet with some Filipino people and get more familiar with the culture and also to promote our service and the partnership with the Filipino community.

What makes the Philippine market unique?

Peter: That’s a fantastic question. One of the things we talk about is not only what makes it unique but what makes it uniquely attractive to Multiply. We’ve developed a service that primarily is for the exchange of personal media between family and friends and that resonates particularly well with the Filipino people. The Filipino has a culture that’s really focused on families, photographs and the sharing of that type of content so [Multiply] is the perfect product for this user base.

Peter: I think that because of the nature of our product and the way we distinguish ourselves from our competitors is that we offer a more meaningful product that establishes a real world, trusted relationship between people who know each other in real life. That contrasts with other networks that may be more about sort of an online dating type experience. Because of that real world experience, the conversations are more meaningful and opens up the environment to a larger set of advertisers and are deeper engaged.

Peter: Worldwide, we have about nine million users. In the Philippines, it’s about 2.5 million. We’ve got incredible retention rates compared to our competition. Of the users that are active on Multiply, 96 percent of them return on a monthly basis.

Friendster and Multiply seem to be two of the more popular social networking sites in the Philippines. Why is that?

Peter: I can’t really tell you why they favor Friendster. All I know is they were the first, popular networking site. They had a lot of technical issues early on that limited their growth in other areas. The reason why we are popular here, I think, relates to that notion of friends and family, the fact that our service is much more focused on connecting you with people that you know in real life rather than introducing you to people that you don’t know. It’s a site that really plays into the cultural phenomena that’s here in the Philippines.

David: It’s also the photos. I think initially, a lot of people migrated from Friendster because of the photo-sharing capability of Multiply. Back in early 2004, the idea of integrated photo-sharing in a social networking site was pretty novel and Multiply was built with a very robust photo-sharing capability. Unlimited, high res photo uploads. That really tapped into something that appealed to the Filipino audience, hence a lot of people started migrating over from Friendster and once they came over, they became exposed to Multiply as a communications platform that’s used to stay engaged with your friends and family.

David: Multiply has the ability to invite just like any other site but as Peter was saying, we put a lot of emphasis on inviting and connecting with people in the real world. Sure, that maybe prevents us from growing from zero to 100 million overnight like MySpace did but we would much rather have slower, steady, much more meaningful growth to the extent that the networks on Multiply are more meaningful. That gives us a longer and deeper relationship with our customers and I’ll take that any day over faddish growth that maybe faster but not necessarily better.

Peter: We encourage the true friendships and the family relationships because you know, my sister is going to be my sister forever. But if I meet somebody online because she has a cute profile, what’s the likelihood that I’m going stay with that service because some random stranger is on it? We’re really focused on that, as well as providing more meaningful content.

David: If your online social network is full of people that you have no real-world connection to, there’s very little reason to keep you there and it’s very easy for you to switch. But on Multiply, it’s your real-world social network online and your content and it’s the discussion that goes on around that content that’s going to keep you coming back.

Peter: When you have that network of real world friends and family, the type of content that you want to share with those people is a lot different. This is opposed to having a network of online buddies that you don’t really know in real life. What do you keep posting? What you can share with those people is limited whereas if you have your brother, your sister, your mom and all your best friends on Multiply, you can share the type of personal content that they will care about.

It’s closer, deeper relationships which enables the sharing of personal, meaningful content to you and the continuing sharing of that is the personal documentation of your life online. Over a period of time, you build up this history like a living scrapbook of what’s happening in your life and it’s a collaborative effort because while you add to it, all your friends and family add to it also and that’s what really develops the long-term value.

Peter: We’re probably coming close to a billion page views this month. In the Philippines, we make about 300 million. Filipinos are just rabid consumers of content. It’s amazing.

Paolo: The average Filipino Multiply user does about 160 page views a month. That’s really high.

Peter: Those 160 page views aren’t just fluff page views of people bouncing from profile to profile. It’s people consuming photos, videos and blogs from the people in their world. It’s meaningful activity. It reflects the deep level of engagement that we have with our user base especially here in the Philippines.

Peter: The average person on Multiply is in their late 20s to 30s. It differs by geography but overall, it skews 60-40 female.

Peter: Prior to our partnership with ABS-CBN, our growth has been entirely viral so we’re not exactly advertising the product to any specific segment. It’s sort of how the product features have naturally appealed to different demographics. That’s how we have grown this organically. We’ve often thought that our advance privacy controls would appeal to an older audience and different geographies have different demographics. In the US, we have an older demographic but here, it’s younger.

David: It’s not necessarily that we’re doing things to explicitly appeal to an older demographic but we’re not doing anything that would turn them away. For example, if you would go to some other social networking sites, as soon as you hit their home page, it’s very clear what the culture of the site is all about. You see headshots and content from strangers and stuff like that is inherently going to turn away the older audience. So we’re not doing anything to specifically target those late 20s and 30-something users but when they come to Multiply, they don’t find anything that would turn them away.

One of the things that we’re so happy about is not that we have 9 million registered users or 2.2 million in the Philippines but because the growth is so strong. We see this as the tip of the iceberg and we can penetrate these markets much more deeply. Our growth curve over the last few years and projected growth in the next couple of years is just phenomenal.