Social Network Multiply Raises $16.6 Million In Funding

Multiply is a Florida-based social network targeted towards an older audience than Facebook and MySpace. It has been around since 2003, but has struggled to become as popular as some of its competition.

2007 has proved to be the most successful year so far for Multiply, which saw more than 10 million visitors in August, a number that is rising by 10% per month. Chief executive Peter Pezaris has even claimed that unique visitors to the site have doubled since Multiply's introduction of a new, redesigned user interface last year.

Now, with over 6 million registered users, the social network has announced that it has received an additional $16.6 million in venture funding. Will this be enough, however, to help this lagging network catch up with MySpace and Facebook?

Back in July, Comscore conducted a study of the top social networks, and Multiply was not even present. Although this is because it did not acquire the 10 million unique visitors required to be included until the month after the study, it shows that Multiply is even farther behind the smaller networks such as Orkut, Bebo and Tagged.

The round of venture funding was led by VantagePoint Venture Partners. Other participating firms include Point Judith Capital and Transcosmos Investments.

According to Venture Beat, "the message boards, as the company has more recently discovered, have proven vital for gaining and keeping user attention. Present since the site launched, this feature lets you distribute photos, videos, comments and other information to all of your friends and friends-of-friends." Relationships in each individual's network determine how your content and media is displayed to other users, creating a personalized message board for each user.

Although Multiply has had this feature longer than Facebook, Eric Eldon also notes that Multiply failed to "give this feature prominence until last November, two months after Facebook launched its own version."

The team at Multiply better have some new and innovative ideas up their sleeves to improve their network and drive traffic to it. With Facebook no longer tied solely to colleges and universities, more and more of the "too-mature-for-MySpace" crowd is signing up for Zuckerberg's offering.

Time is working against these guys and I am not quite sure if Multiply needs capital as much as they need fresh ideas and the ability to market those ideas quickly. The iPhone-optimized version of the site and the upcoming toolbar are a good starting point, but it's just the beginning.