Multiply.com Raises Consumer Media Stakes AND $16.6 million VC: INTERVIEW
SOCIAL NETWORKING NEWS FLASH: Multiply.com is NOT a Facebook “with wrinkles.”
Moreover, would the Managing Director of the Digital Media & Internet team of Vantage Point Venture Partners (VPVP)–with more than $5 billion of assets under management–lead a $16.6 million Series B round fund on behalf of a “also ran” social network?
Of course not. Nevertheless, conventional blogosphere (not so) widsom is that the social networking space is a winner take virtually all one, so Multiply.com–and its venture capital backers–had thus better be content with financial leftovers.
That is NOT the venture beat that VPVP is leading, however, in supporting Multiply founder and CEO Peter Pezaris’ vision to forge a NEW online social networking path, one that does not revolve around “profile-surfing or adding-in strangers as friends.”
Moreover, calling a destination consumer media platform that transacts 1,250,000 photo uploads a day an “also ran,” is “also ran” analysis!
I chatted with Pezaris last month when he unleashed Multiply on the iPhone, as I recount in:Facebook iPhone Hype Busting: Multiply.com Rules, 13 Mobile Media Ways, previewing a substanial new funding round.
The new capital day has arrived for Multiply and I spoke yesterday with the VPVP Managing Director that is joining Multiply’s board: David Scott Carlick. Carlick is no stranger to social networking, he served as Chairman of Intermix Media, parent of MySpace.com, through its acquisition by MySpace.
Carlick’s operating track record experience, however, may prove to be an even greater asset to Pezaris and the Multiply team, such as his namesake Silicon Valley-based Carlick Advertising and his instrumental role in the founding of DoubleClick while spearheading Poppe Tyson’s interactive marketing group.
Carlick told me he looks to Multiply–and all the social neworking players–to further educate brand advertisers about the under utilized power of reaching consumers in new, peer-to-peer environments where the users create all the content.
Multiply currently sports Google AdSense, derided by Carlick as “backfill” which does not enhance user experience. Both Carlick and Pezaris told me they envisage a Multiply monetized by high quality brand advertisers seeking to directly engage with real people as they interact with friends and family in their own personal online spaces.
Multiply calls itself an “all-in-one social networking, communications and digital content-sharing platform.”
I asked Carlick to identify Multiply’s single, most significant competitor: There isn’t one. If there was a single one, it might very well be Shutterfly, NOT Facebook.
Carlick told me Multiply is designed as a digital content hosting and sharing platform for pre-established real-world personal networks, rather than an as an open, mass network for fueling social interactions among strangers. Carlick views the Multiply competiive space as a “Ven diagram” because the Multiply mult-service platform fuses diverse communications and media functionality.
Pezaris agrees, confirming his commitment to continue “innovating and building a compelling, easy-to-use, one-stop solution for sharing a variety of digital media.”
Pezaris is seeking his second big consumer media win online; He parlayed $10,000 of personal funds into an eight figure buyout via his Commissioner.com, a fantasy sports statistics service which became part of SportsLine.com.
I asked Carlick for his take on why a Facebook famous for “poking” gets all the blogosphere love, while a property such as Multiply, “a serious media sharing platform for serious adults,” is eagerly dismissed as an “also ran” for “old people.”
Just as consumers flock in fleeting, fickle packs to what is percieved to be the newest, hottest social networking thing, there is a media pack, herd mentality that takes refuge in spouting conventional (not so) wisdom about a big winner take all scorecard.
The Carlick Multiply scorecard? “Helping them become a social networking powerhouse.”
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