Slashdot Mirror

There's a company that already does this in pretty dramatic fasion -- multiply.com. Take the social networking from Orkut (only make the site actually work), add blogging like blogger or livejournal, social bookmarks like delicious, e-mail like gmail and photo-hosting like flikr -- what do you get? Multiply.com.

Try it. You won't be disappointed.

I'll put in a shameless plug for my company's site Multiply which offers free blogging, digital photo album support, and much much more. The best part is that it's built on top of a unique messaging system, based on your social network, which routes notification messages when entries are added and/or replied to. It's pretty neat, and built entirely on free software. Give it a try!

My Multiply page

I'll put in a shameless plug for my company's site Multiply which offers free blogging, digital photo album support, and much much more. The best part is that it's built on top of a unique messaging system, based on your social network, which routes notification messages when entries are added and/or replied to. It's pretty neat, and built entirely on free software. Give it a try!

My Multiply page

Ha! If you think those are offensive, check out this: BushClippy or this Statergey

Blogging isn't new. Photoblogging isn't new either. What is new is a site called Multiply which is a convergence of digital content publishing and management, and the "six degrees of separation" of sites like Orkut and Friendster (heck you can even import your Orkut contacts if you want).

How many of you maintain a blog that nobody reads? As someone most cleverly put it, most blogs are "the sound of one hand clapping." But because of the integration of social networking, the people that will read your blog on Multiply are your roommate's sister, your friend's cousin, and your buddy's brother -- people like that. Of course there are tools to control access as well, so if you want to publish something just for your contacts (or even a subset of that), you can do that too.

Similarly if you are a photographer, the photo printing sites like Shutterfly and oFoto almost go out of their way to make it painful to share your photos on-line (you see, they only make money if you print them, and if you share them on-line you might not need to). With Multiply on the other hand sharing your photos is as simple as a few clicks. When I uploaded pics of my halloween party, for instance, over 200 of my friends (and their friends) read it within a day of me posting. Now *that* is cool.

Finally, if you're a lurker, there's no better place... you get to see what's going on with everyone in your network, and get to see things you never would have otherwise. One of my friends has a cousin stationed in Iraq who posted pictures of Sadam's palace -- unbelievable! And I never would have seen them if it wasn't for the connection on Multiply. That's only one example out of dozens and dozens.

Try it out... you won't be disappointed.

MASSIVE DISCLAIMER: I'm one of the founders of Multiply. That doesn't mean I think it's any less cool though! ;-)

Check out my Multiply site for an example of what you can do.

Blogging isn't new. Photoblogging isn't new either. What is new is a site called Multiply which is a convergence of digital content publishing and management, and the "six degrees of separation" of sites like Orkut and Friendster (heck you can even import your Orkut contacts if you want).

How many of you maintain a blog that nobody reads? As someone most cleverly put it, most blogs are "the sound of one hand clapping." But because of the integration of social networking, the people that will read your blog on Multiply are your roommate's sister, your friend's cousin, and your buddy's brother -- people like that. Of course there are tools to control access as well, so if you want to publish something just for your contacts (or even a subset of that), you can do that too.

Similarly if you are a photographer, the photo printing sites like Shutterfly and oFoto almost go out of their way to make it painful to share your photos on-line (you see, they only make money if you print them, and if you share them on-line you might not need to). With Multiply on the other hand sharing your photos is as simple as a few clicks. When I uploaded pics of my halloween party, for instance, over 200 of my friends (and their friends) read it within a day of me posting. Now *that* is cool.

Finally, if you're a lurker, there's no better place... you get to see what's going on with everyone in your network, and get to see things you never would have otherwise. One of my friends has a cousin stationed in Iraq who posted pictures of Sadam's palace -- unbelievable! And I never would have seen them if it wasn't for the connection on Multiply. That's only one example out of dozens and dozens.

Try it out... you won't be disappointed.

MASSIVE DISCLAIMER: I'm one of the founders of Multiply. That doesn't mean I think it's any less cool though! ;-)

Check out my Multiply site for an example of what you can do.

It is also not slow like Orkut is. And you can actually join them without being invited.

They lack users, being new but I guess that they will get many since Orkut is more and more down or too damn slow.

http://multiply.com/

What all these sites are nibbling around the edges of, is that people want to communicate more effectively. In the last 20 years we've seen two major advancements in communication: the web-based message board (like slashdot), and instant messenger. More recently some social networking sites have come close, but none have succeeded in that perfect combination of being able to easily share your thoughts, words, and photos with everyone you care about (and everyone they care about).

The only site I've seen that even comes close is called Multiply, and even that needs some work before it's truly powerful (I'd like to see more integration with existing communication tools, for instance).

The next few years are going to bring some dramatic change to the way we communicate -- that's for sure. Wonder which direction we'll be taken; let's just hope it's not an "embrace and extend" strategy by Microsoft!

Yes, there are options, but not having to rely upon an outside service for updating the content in your blog or gallery is what MovableType provides.

I agree that MovableType (and sixapart) should have the right to charge for their program. But going from free to crippled 70-600 dollar licenses is a bit of a shock to those of us who didn't see this coming.

Blogger or livejournal, etc are of course for people who don't want to get their hands dirty with setup and maintenance. It's a great service. But what happens if the service goes belly-up? Think mp3.com and the artists. While there's a great deal of minless drivel on many blogs, still others provide witty, insightful, funny, local, or even newsworthy content.

It's a shame that MovableType has deliberately alienated their community support and likely will end their own dominance over the weblog content management software.

For people starting out on weblogging, I agree that multiply, blogger, livejournal, or some such service is definitely worth a look.

For those of you already using MT and looking for alternatives, the ones that have been commonly mentioned in the past day may be worth checking out. For example, TextPattern, Drupal or Wordpress.

Don't like the free alternatives? MT's success came from community support. Do the same thing for these. Test them, report bugs, develop them, use them. Show MT that they're not the only game in town, just one of the most expensive.

There are plenty of other ways to publish a blog. My favorite happens to be Multiply because it offers so much more than just straight blogging.