Local media magnate ABS-CBN, under its subsidiary ABS-CBN Global Ltd., has bought a five-percent stake in Multiply, Inc., the company behind social networking site Multiply. ABS-CBN's interactive division, ABS-CBNi, also signed an advertising deal with the American-run site.

ABS-CBN revealed it purchased 2.5 million shares of stocks in Multiply, Inc. “at a purchase price of $1.9806 per share, or a total purchase price of $5 million last November 13.”

“Under the stock purchase agreement,” ABS-CBN News said, the local broadcasting company “may, during the two-year period following the intial purchase of shares, acquire additional shares in Multiply to bring its ownership to as much as 10 percent of the total authorized stock of Multiply.”

ABS-CBN's long-term plans for Multiply include “more Internet advertising and the launch of mobile services for Multiply users in the Philippines,” ABS-CBN News quoted ABS-CBNi head Paolo Pineda.

The realization of these plans came when the two companies announced their “multi-year, strategic advertising agreement” on Nov. 7. According to a press release on Multiply, ABS-CBNi will “sell advertising and mobile services for Multiply's Filipino users, with the two companies sharing revenues.” The deal will allow Multiply to “monetize a significant portion of its traffic while still retaining a primary focus on product development and global customer acquisition.”

“Social networking is flourishing in the Philippines and online ad-spending is increasing year-by-year,” Multiply CEO Peter Pezaris said in a statement. “Partnering with ABS-CBN, and having access to all their top-flight blue chip advertisers gives Multiply a strong competitive edge in grabbing an early and large slice of the online advertising pie while extending our brand in the Philippines, the Asia Pacific, and worldwide.”

“Multiply's unique focus on sharing media with real-life friends and family is what makes the service so appealing to Filipinos. Their appeal and brand is particularly attractive to ABS-CBN's portfolio of household name advertisers,” Pineda said, adding that “close to 3 million Filipinos are using multiply.com,” BusinessMirror reported.

The deal with ABS-CBN has brought Multiply's valuation “at $100 million,” TechCrunch said. As of its August 2007 figures, the site has over 6 million users and over 400 million page views. Its competitors include Facebook and MySpace.

As of October 2008, Compete.com's analysis of the site said the site has about 1 million unique visitors a month and almost 3 million visits monthly.

As of November 2008, Alexa computed that 14.3 percent of Multiply's users come from the Philippines. It is reportedly 6^th in the country's overall top visited sites, with first place going to Yahoo!, second to Friendster, third to YouTube, fourth to Google.com.ph and fifth to Google.com.

The agreement is “great news for the Philippine state of new media, according to blogger Ia Lucero, as “someone recognizes [the] growth [of mainstream media] and wishes to take advantage of it.” However, it “is merely an ad deal, which means there doesn't seem to be any significant drive by either company to create something ingenious on the Web, which this country is in dire need of,” she added.

Photo: “Screen Capture: Multiply,” by POC Staff. Licensed under Creative Commons license number BY-NC-SA-3.0-PH.

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2008-12-04 21:23:59 Quote 1   0 wHaAaAt..... says... ang ABS-CBN ay isang basura hahaha.. isa kyong talunan

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