ABS CBN announced last Nov 17 that they are purchasing a 5% stake in Multiply.com for $5 million dollars, valuing the entire company at 100 million dollars.
Multiply is a popular social networking site in the Philippines and according to Alexa, is the 6th most popular website in the country, next only to Yahoo, Friendster, Youtube, Google.com.ph and Google. Multiply has an estimated 3 million Filipino users.
From the official announcement over at http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/ ABS stated that Multiply and ABS complement each other.
"Multiply is a natural fit for ABS-CBN. It is the social network that is most consistent to our business model because they have focused on photo, video and blog features compared to the other social networks such as Friendster and Facebook, which focus on connecting friends and running applications. This puts together content and communities around the content, whether it is ABS-CBN-branded or user-generated," he told abs-cbnNEWS.com.
With regard to long term plans for the partnership, it will be monetized via advertising (which are happening now) and creating a mobile version of the site.
I think that Multiply.com is a viable medium for advertising for the Philippine market, but these brands should establish an emotional relationship with, and be of real value to, their consumers. (Compare to P&G's Ted McConnell's statement on Facebook, where he says P&G probably shouldn't advertise on Facebook.) If you know of one, let me know. Majority of commercial entities in Multiply are online stores, selling stuff like clothes and shoes.
