Of course, Multiply needn’t grow by a factor of 10 or 20 to remain accurately identified; in a mathematical sense, you can just as easily multiply something by one or 0.5.  The social network did even better, though, and a press release stated, “Multiply has experienced breakneck growth, doubling their traffic since last spring. . . .  In August, Multiply had just under 10 million unique visitors coming to its site.”

Anyway, $16.6 million is bound to help any site.  This particular social network emphasizes privacy (and on that subject, appears to take a shot at Facebook), but will, as its investors surely hoped, be looking into ways to expand.

Those investors, by the way, were led by VantagePoint Venture Partners, and David Scott Carlick, the managing director of VantagePoint, announced, “I look forward to serving on the board with Multiply as they become a major force in how friends and families store and share their lives.”

Hat tip to 901am’s Rhiza Sanchez.

The concept of the “Smart” Social Network dawned on me after I learned about Multiply. At that point, I already knew about Vox and previously wrote about imbee, so I decided to write a post on what I thought was a “Smart” Social Network. My recent piece at Read/Write Web is the result.

Essentially, a Smart Social Network brings intelligence into the network. It provides a way to define and describe virtual relationships – it gives users more control.

Richard actually added some valuable thoughts to this one, particularly in the conclusion. I hope you will take a peak – Smart Social Networks:

But what if there was a way to put access controls around your personal details, so that only people you trust can see it? There’s a new type of SNS arising that enables exactly that.

“Smart” Social Networks – A Better Way to Connect

Smart social networks are bringing intelligence into the network. Similar to the real world, they are helping users describe their online relationships. Let’s take a look at some of today’s evolving “smart” social networks: Facebook, imbee, Vox, and Mulitply.

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Ken Yarmosh is a consultant who helps organizations get the most out of their technology investments. He works with technology users and creators across various industries, focusing on technology education and strategy. With over 7 years IT experience, Ken has worked with small businesses, non-profits, federal agencies, and multi-million dollar companies.

His online efforts include acting as the Editor for the Corante Technology Hub and authoring the TECHNOSIGHT blog.

Features previously limited to paying customers on Multiply have been opened to all of the site’s members. One of those features, the removal of limits on video and image uploads, may serve to entice existing and new members to make more use of Multiply.

“Our goal is to provide people with a meaningful way to communicate and share media with those that are most important to them. By removing all limitations, we’re allowing our existing members to utilize Multiply to their fullest potential” says Peter Pezaris, President and Founder of Multiply. “Additionally, we will attract new users to whom unlimited photo and video uploading is a priority.”

With 2.4 million members, Multiply ranks as one of the smaller sites in the very big pond of social networking presences online. It does have a compelling factor in its favor, a technology implementation that we referred to as ‘discretion-based networking’ in an interview with Pezaris.

Given the proper information about users, Multiply can understand the relationships that exist between contacts in its network. We used the example of the wife of one man’s brother joining Multiply; upon learning of the matrimonial relationship, Multiply then knows she is the other man’s sister-in-law.

Now that family can dish out all of the multimedia content it can create to their place on Multiply. The company cited the growth of video sites like the hugely popular YouTube, Google Video, and AOL’s new UnCut Video that recently launched in beta as its reason for the change. Pezaris and company hope to capitalize on the popularity of video and boost usage and growth of the Multiply network.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Microsoft Wants To Smack MySpace

Just when everyone thought MySpace had relegated all the other players into second-tier status, Microsoft announced it would step up and throw a chair (figuratively!) at Fox Interactive Media’s best-known website.

Currently, Wallop has placed a basic web presence online, featuring some of the details of the forthcoming service. Based in Silicon Valley, the startup will be led by Karl Jacob, a former Microsoft executive who has headed psychic advisor site Keen.com, which became Ingenio, and then anti-spam firm Cloudmark.

Wallop will take a cash wallop of its own, collecting venture capital funding from both Microsoft and Bay Partners. The amount of initial investing is not known.

The source of the technology is a little more known, as it emerges from Microsoft’s IP Ventures. That year-old creation offers technology built by Microsoft Research to entrepreneurs who wish to license and develop it further.

Microsoft provided some background on what they feel will differentiate Wallop from other social networking sites:

The model sounds similar to that offered by Multiply, another social networking site. In an interview with Multiply CEO Peter Pezaris, he described the “six degrees of separation” idea of how people may be connected based on relationships.

That model allows Multiply to identify people by existing relationship in the network. For example, Multiply knows that if my brother’s wife joins Multiply, and identifies herself as such, the site knows she is my sister-in-law.

How closely Wallop comes to that model won’t be known until its release this year.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

A-list bloggers are the hippies of the 21st Century. They preach peace, love, content sharing, and Web 2.0 IPOs. Instead of a VW van, they tool around in data packets while they cruise the Internet in search of the next great sharing idea.

Unfortunately their soundtrack resembles Woodstock circa 1969, but minus the Jimi Hendrix performance. It’s pretty awful, and there are a lot of people who really don’t want to be part of such a cacophonous crowd.

Not everyone has bought into the share-with-everyone message from our new hippie friends. Strange but true. Multiply takes a discretion-based approach to sharing, permitting users to share with as broad or narrow a range of others as they wish.

Pezaris discussed his social networking site, Multiply, which recently entered version 2.0, during a phone call with us. Multiply takes a different approach to the concept of sharing which Pezaris likened to the “six degrees of separation” idea of how people may be connected based on relationships.

That concept has gained the site around 2.5 million users, and Pezaris said the number of active users out of that number is “sky-high.” Multiply does more than recognize a list of contacts; it understands the relationships that exist between disparate contacts.

The concept works this way: if my brother joined Multiply and we note in the service that the relationship exists, Multiply will know when his wife joins that she is also my sister-in-law.

The sharing part offers a variety of ways to organize contacts and distinguish those organized groups. Multiply maps relationships more accurately between users, according to Pezaris, whether they are friends, family, or business associates. Either the user will know someone directly or indirectly; Multiply will be able to figure out that relationship.

Getting to this point from Multiply’s launch in August 2004 saw the company draw on its tight-knit management team to leverage the “six degrees” concept and apply it to communication. They built the user tools, data tracking, and content management Multiply would need to be successful.

Most recently, Multiply constructed an Ajax-based platform it calls “Live Replies.” Pezaris described this as a “self-assembling chatroom” for real-time communications. When viewing a blog post or a photo album, comments posted to them by others organize in real-time into a virtual conversation.

With Multiply still carrying the beta tag, I asked if version 2.0 represented a complete application today. Pezaris said it is on the way there, with the addition of new features like Live Replies, tagging enhancements, and navigation tweaks.

Oh, and they rounded the corners on various visual elements throughout the site, because it is version 2.0. And, as a user updates content, contacts the user has shared the content with receive notifications on their message boards.

The free service carries advertising as the support model for the business. Multiply also offers three premium tiers of membership at different subscription rates. Those tiers remove the ads and make other features like additional site themes available.

Premium members can upload greater amounts of music, videos, and images each month. No one should have to listen to bad music again, unless they really want it.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

“Devices that record video have become ubiquitous – you have camcorders, digital cameras, even cell phones. But until now there wasn’t an easy, convenient way to share the video,” says Peter Pezaris, Multiply’s president. “By making it convenient for users to put their videos and music on the same site as their photos, blogs and events, we’re opening up these types of media to a mass audience.”

These upgrades coincide with the introduction of Multiply’s paid account upgrade service, which consists of Gold and Platinum accounts. According to their release, “all Multiply users get unlimited storage for their videos, music, and photos free of charge, users with premium accounts get higher monthly upload limits.” More information about Multiply’s Gold and Platinum subscription options can be found here.

“Our pay upgrades allow us to provide a better experience for everyone, including non-paying users,” says Pezaris. “Our power users can share a ton of media, and our more casual users don’t get hit with the barrage of advertising prevalent on other photo and video-sharing sites.”

These tools coming from these account upgrades allow users to alter and personalize their web space, all the while sharing this experience with members of their social group.

Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest search news.

One of the ways these networks attempt to attract new users is by introducing unique services not offered by other competitors. Seemingly armed with this particular mindset, Multiply.com, a social network launched in March 2004, has introduced an embedded search engine designed to assist members find content distributed by others within their social network.

In other words, Multiply’s search function takes user queries and searches through members of the search initiator’s network, seeking relevant results. An example provided by Multiply’s press release reveals:

“If you are planning a vacation to Rome, a search on Multiply may yield a photo album taken by your cousin’s neighbor during his vacation, and a blog entry written by your co-worker’s nephew when he was backpacking through Europe,” according to Peter Pezaris, Multiply’s founder and CEO.

In order to better offer relevant results, Multiply is using an algorithm that makes use of the site’s proprietary proximity index. In the development of their search service, Multiply emphasized relationship dynamics when searching a query. This means the search engine considers whether or not the person in your social network is related (wife, sibling) or merely an acquaintance when applying relevance rankings to the query results.

Based on their description, one can imagine information posted by someone you are closer to socially will be more relevant than information from someone who is not. There is a stipulation with Multiply’s search: users cannot search outside of their social circle.

While social networks may be viewed as being pass, offering technology like this can be beneficial, especially if the search function does what it says. If you can offer relevant results from a member’s social network, which includes friends of friends, users may be more attracted to the service.

I do feel that technology like Multiply’s social search engine is not a deal breaker in the sense that more people probably won’t be clamoring to join Multiply because of it. However, an effective social search service can most certainly be labeled as an attractive option.

Read Multiply’s press release

Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest search news.

What does this have to do with internet marketing?

Everything.

You see, if you can make 1 sale, you should be able to make a hundred sales.

The problem is many internet marketers are only making a sale here or there (if any at all), but if you are making ANY salesyou should be making MANY sales.

Here are some tips on how to multiply your sales:

1. Sell the reprint/reproduction rights to your products. In doing so, you can make the equivalent of 15-20 sales in a single sale.

2. You could upsell to your customers. When a customer arrives at your order page, tell them about a few extra related products you have for sale. They could just add it to their original order. Remember, if a customer is willing to buy one thing from you, they are likely to buy several things from you.

3. When you make your first sale, follow-up with the customer. You could follow-up with a “thank you” email and include an advertisement for other products you sell. You could follow-up every few days, weeks, or months. Of course, in order to a have a strong follow-up campaign you need to have a good autoresponder. Getresponse.com is one I highly recommend that gives you everything you need for a strong follow-up email campaign(http://www.money-teacher.com/getresponse.htm)

4. Tell your customers if they refer four customers to your web site, they will receive a full rebate of their purchase price. This will turn one sale into three sales.

5. When you sell a product, give your customers the option of joining an affiliate program so they can make commissions selling your product. This will multiply the sale you just made. Setting up an affiliate program is simple. Clickbank is just one a several companies that will handle all your affiliate needs for a very small fee. However, you can also purchase software such as AssocTRAC 4.0 that is an all-in-one affiliate management solution (http://www.marketingtips.com/assoctrac/t.x/806885).

6. You could cross promote your product with other businesses’ products in a package deal. Instead of working against your competition, why not try working with you competition?

7. When you ship out or deliver your product, include a coupon for other related products you sell in the package. This will attract them to buy more products from you.

8. Sell gift certificates for your products. You’ll make sales from the purchase of the gift certificate, when the recipient cashes it in. They could also buy other items from your web site.

My point is this

If you are making any sales at all then you owe it to yourself to turn those few sales into many sales. Start trying some of these tips and you’ll do just that.

Adam Waxler owns and operates The Money Teacher web site
and publishes The Money Teacher’s Home Business Tips
Newsletter teaching others how to reach online success. To
get your free newsletter subscription send a blank email
to: newsletter@money-teacher.com or visit our web site at

http://www.money-teacher.com

Yes it is true and you can do this through a powerful principle known as LEVERAGE. Using leverage is really about creating momentum. Your ultimate aim should be to create self-sustaining *traffic systems* which pay you over and over again for a one-time effort.

Whether the traffic source is completely free or not doesn’t matter. You can invest time and money and still multiply your results – or you can start with a zero budget and build a steady stream of traffic that outperforms any pay-per-click campaign. “What then is the secret to leverage?” The secret to leverage is in the setting up of efficient, self-perpetuating systems. In other words, the foundation is viral marketing.

You invest your time to create a traffic generation tool, set it loose on the world and then let OTHERS do the work for you. You work only once but the system continues to grow and multiply your results.

So, what qualifies as leverage? Essentially, any system you set up which allows your links and your sales message to propagate online in “word of mouth” fashion. This can be a free report or e-book, an article with your byline and links, a “refer a friend” feature on your web site and even your affiliate program.

However, for these tools to work their magic, you must include one important feature: incentive. What is the incentive to downloa.d your e-book or become your affiliate? It will come down to either PROFIT or VALUE. You’re either paying someone in commissions for their effort or you’re offering them valuable information for free.

Understand this one principle and you’ll succeed: give first in order to receive later. With this in mind, here are five no-cost explosive viral leveraging tactics you can put into action immediately:

1. Viral Report Traffic

If you sell information products, it’s almost a requirement to have at least one freebie report to give away from your web site. Free reports are common these days, but many are actually doing it wrongly. So you will need to pay extra attention to your incentive to stand out from the crowd.

Allowing others to re-brand your report with their affiliate links is the basic incentive. The advanced incentive comes through increasing the report’s inherent value. Your potential customers may find “free” to be incentive enough. However, your real army of traffic multiplication is made up of other webmasters.

Meaning, the more value you put into your report, the more likely they are to earn commissions by giving it away. It’s a simple matter of impressing the potential customer enough to give you the sale.

Here’s a powerful resource to have if you want to create explosive viral reports fast: http://www.miniebook.com To rebrand your reports, the best tool I’ve used to date is “Viral PDF”. You can find more information about this powerful software here: http://snipurl.com/8vfr

2. Viral Article Traffic

You’ve likely heard of this a dozen times alrea.dy, and I’m a VERY big fan of this tactic simply because it works. There are actually TWO potential traffic sources built into reprint articles.

Obviously, the first source comes from re-distribution of your articles and clicks on the link in your byline. The other source comes from the search engines themselves.

Think about it for a moment. Every article you write has a theme which is naturally optimized on certain keywords. Yet, rather than wait for your site to rank on these keywords, your article can rank higher than your entire web site on those keywords.

Why? Because the distribution sites you send your article to already have high ranking in the engines! They get more traffic, period, simply because they’re larger – but, and this is important, they serve articles similar to yours with similar keywords, creating a greater overall keyword density which the engines reward with a higher ranking.

I’ve recently created a 17 page report “Lifetime Traffic” that walks you through the entire process of article marketing quickly and easily. Get it from the below link if you haven’t yet: http://instantmarketingsecrets.com/lifetime.htm

3. Viral Subscriber Traffic

How’s this for a clever use of resources: leverage the traffic and leads you already have. You’ve done the work to build your email list to the level it’s at now, so why not put it to work for you?

Again, all you need to do is offer an incentive. For example, you could set up a “pseudo-affiliate” program or some form of tracking system and announce to your list that one lucky member can receive a high ticket item from you for free if they can refer X number of new subscribers to your list. All they have to do is sign up and promote a special link you provide to them.

4. Viral Referral Traffic

Consider implementing a “refer a friend” feature on your home page. All you need is a referral script to accomplish this. You’ll need to provide incentive to those visitors, however. You might do this by offering a special bonus (separate from what you distribute to newsletter signups) in exchange for the referral.

You could also approach this from an entertainment angle, and offer electronic greeting cards or games. It will depend on the theme of your site. An easy to customize refer-a-friend script can be found at http://www.allthescripts.com/page-457105.htm

5. Viral Affiliate Traffic

Affiliate programs are tried and true traffic generators. The profit incentive is built in and you pay nothing for the publicity until an actual sale is made. However, to super charge your affiliate program, you should provide extra incentive to your affiliates. If you can afford to offer a higher per sale commission, then do it.

Allow your affiliates to get the inside scoop on your products before anyone else. Offer them the support and education they require to better market your product and boost their own bottom lines.

Here’s another tip, you should consider implementing a multi-tier affiliate program with an attractive incentive plan. This will build your affiliate base like crazy and generate traffic on steroids for your site. This model typically works best for residual programs like http://instantmarketingsecrets.com/pbp.htm

Another ingenious example of viral affiliate traffic is Stone Evans’ Plug-In Profit Site. His is one of the first and probably most successful replicable traffic model that rewards people just to give away free money-making sites. You can find Stone’s site at http://turnkeymoney.com/plug.htm

The five tactics covered here are relatively simple to set up and implement, but then most marketers do not use them.

Remember to place value and incentive at the center of your campaigns, and watch your traffic multiply on autopilot like an unstoppable explosion!

Ewen Chia is an expert information
publisher and marketer with a fiery
passion for creating unique quality content
fellow internet marketers can benefit from.
Visit his websites today:

http://WebsiteConversionSecrets.com
http://InstantMarketingSecrets.com

http://www.Marketing-Make-Money.com

Not being obviously unique is one of the chief reasons websites fail to make a profit.

Websites and products can be unique based on several criteria:

* Unique product – no one else has it.

* Unique price – same product, best price.

* Unique market – same product, only in German or for Teens.

* Unique expertise – Is your site the result of your own unique experience, education or expertise? This can be your key to differentiation.

* Unique service – same product, better support.

Of course, having a combination can make your site even more appealing: Better price AND better service, for example, can be a powerful combination.

So, take a second and figure out what is unique about YOUR offer. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Now, see if you can make that into a short, easy to understand sentence.

Here are some examples to get you started:

“Same Products, Lower Prices, Guaranteed”

“A Live Operator to Help You Each Step of the Way”

“Real Expertise, At Your Disposal”

“The Potato Slicing Widget”

“The 5 Minute Butt & Ab Solution”

“Let us Build YOUR Bikini Body”

“I’ve Helped Create over $1 BILLION in profits-Let me help you”

“Not Just a Book: Real Parenting Helps that Make a Difference”

“You Haven’t Used a Widget until you have experienced our LUXURY Widget”

“Like No Widget Ever Made”

“Nobody Beats our Prices and Service”

“The Indestructible Widget”

“Bidwell Widgets: When Only the Best Will Do”

“Bidwell Widgets: The Last Widget You Will Ever Buy”

For more ideas, tap into this resource. You’ll be amazed at how simple this can be:

http://www.All-In-One-Business.com/sugar

For example, at All-In-One-Business.com we have a simple, yet powerful advantage statement:

We don’t succeed until YOU succeed.

We use that because we actually care whether or not our customers, students and clients make money. This is a stark contrast to those who simply sell an eBook, collect some money and then leave customers in the dust.

We even have a graphic we use to represent that idea. You can see it here:

http://www.All-In-One-Business.com/imm/20040521

(Look in the lower right-hand corner of the page.)

When you add one of these sentences (we call it a catch phrase) to your advertising and websites, an interesting thing happens: Your customers, subscribers and visitors will begin seeing you in that light.

You will begin getting emails parroting back to you the very phrase you want them to get-”I know your widgets are indestructible, but do they come in blue?”

By creating a simple benefit statement you will see more traffic, more subscribers and more sales. Try it, you’ll like the results.

Kevin Bidwell is owner of

http://www.All-In-One-Business.com/cg-bin/at.cgi?a=274293

Kevin just finished a complete report on building a passive
income. Grab your copy here:

http://www.All-In-One-Business.com/cg-bin/at.cgi?a=274293&e=/pi