My experience with Multiply is a memorable one. For just one year, I found people who shared my interests (non-fiction then) and found myself writing more often than usual. Multiply also gave me the chance to color my cyber walls with the digital wallpapers and online crayons provided for free. In this hub, I felt so liberated customizing blogs and sharing photos, videos, links, whatever I want. I shed my shyness and revealed skin (sometimes literally). I wrote the best stories and blogs, all about these idiosyncrasies of a teenage fairy camping out his sexual repression in Catholic school. I also met the oddest and wittiest of people who critiqued my works and also shared what they have. It’s not appropriate to be this expressive only online, it’ll make you feel like a recluse. But somehow it felt really great.
Okay, so Multiply probably had some snob appeal. People in the site believed that it was for the cool kids, and Friendster was soooo years behind - it’s become a ‘bakya’ website (now I think a similar hierarchy also exists between Tumblr and Facebook but both manage to coexist). Looking at it however, Multiply only had the advantage of being a prominent blog site. The cool smart peti-b kids preferred Multiply just so they had an outlet for creative juices and candy tantrums. The ideas that having a DSLR was an implication of class and a degree in photography and being so good in English meant you’re better off than the rest were beginning to gain prominence around the circles of Multiply. It was a short-lived elitism until a more democratic site came to demolish the boundaries and let everyone be friends and unfriends. But amateur artists like me had Multiply as an avenue for our eccentricities, too. People there understood and gave a damn about whatever you have to say.
Around December, Multiply will face the situation similar to that of Friendster - it’ll remove the social ties and everything shared to be a business site. Facebook is the juggernaut that snapped all these sites away. It is the epitome of cyberspace’s power, eating up the smaller communities like Multiply and Friendster for the ultimate global village. The sad news made me feel like an old colorful transient house of mine was burned to the ground. And the previous boarders like me, who found so much joy, utility and satisfaction in it, can only look back at this humble beginning of social cyberspace, when the TV generation was still warming up to new screens and are just starting to enjoy new means of self-expression. So long, Multiply.com! - Gio Potes, August 2011
Okay, so Multiply probably had some snob appeal. People in the site believed that it was for the cool kids, and Friendster was soooo years behind - it’s become a ‘bakya’ website (now I think a similar hierarchy also exists between Tumblr and Facebook but both manage to coexist). Looking at it however, Multiply only had the advantage of being a prominent blog site. The cool smart peti-b kids preferred Multiply just so they had an outlet for creative juices and candy tantrums. The ideas that having a DSLR was an implication of class and a degree in photography and being so good in English meant you’re better off than the rest were beginning to gain prominence around the circles of Multiply. It was a short-lived elitism until a more democratic site came to demolish the boundaries and let everyone be friends and unfriends. But amateur artists like me had Multiply as an avenue for our eccentricities, too. People there understood and gave a damn about whatever you have to say.
Around December, Multiply will face the situation similar to that of Friendster - it’ll remove the social ties and everything shared to be a business site. Facebook is the juggernaut that snapped all these sites away. It is the epitome of cyberspace’s power, eating up the smaller communities like Multiply and Friendster for the ultimate global village. The sad news made me feel like an old colorful transient house of mine was burned to the ground. And the previous boarders like me, who found so much joy, utility and satisfaction in it, can only look back at this humble beginning of social cyberspace, when the TV generation was still warming up to new screens and are just starting to enjoy new means of self-expression. So long, Multiply.com! - Gio Potes, August 2011
