Also-ran social network Multiply is trying to staff up in Southeast Asia as it tries to reshape the network into an e-commerce platform following the opening of its offices in Jakarta and Manila late last year.
Multiply, which calls itself a ‘social shopping’ site, is looking to fill a range of vacancies in Indonesia and the Philippines, according to postings on its website. The company is trying to fill full-time positions ranging from sales representatives, software developers, all the way to executive levels.
The Indonesian jobs post says that Multiply hosts 90,000 stores worldwide and has 20,000 unique users. That second figure seems to be a typographical error as Wikipedia puts the number at 20 million users worldwide, with 5 million from the Philippines. It is a far cry however, from Facebook’s 34 million Indonesian users, many of whom use it as a place for social shopping as well.
Thousands of Indonesians use their Facebook profile pages as store fronts for home industries and online shops. While this is no different than what some do at Multiply, Facebook isn’t focused on that particular user behavior and it’s this opportunity that Multiply is hoping to take advantage of. In fact, from the outside it looks to be what local site plasa.com wants to become — a collection of online stores.
Multiply, realizing that it has lost significant global traction, appears to be trying to move in a new direction, with Southeast Asia as a new outpost for future development. Indeed, the site’s ‘about’ page says that it is Southeast Asia’s “biggest marketplace”. Indonesia and The Philippines have been identified as strong regional bases from which Multiply will formulate its strategy for the Southeast Asian region. The company claimed US$124 million in transaction value annually from the Philippines alone, according to a piece in Entrepreneur Philippines magazine (link to a blog that republished the story) last year.
Transactions on Multiply tend to be more traditional in nature, often completed by phone calls, SMS or email. Merchants disclose their bank account numbers and buyers would transfer their payments accordingly, although more tech-savvy merchants may choose to use PayPal.
Multiply offers free listing and use of its general facilities and it also does not collect any fee from any transaction. Instead, it has a three-tiered trusted seller program which is renewable on a yearly basis and an advertising program.
Multiply’s big move in Indonesia has been to hire Daniel Tumiwa from Indonesian BlackBerry app development company 7 Langit as its Indonesia country manager. Tumiwa had previously been involved in the digital space with local tobacco giant Djarum, Universal Music and Soundbuzz, as well as running MTV Indonesia in its early days. He also held consulting positions with Air Asia, Yahoo, and CNBC in the past.
Tumiwa told us about his joining Multiply at the BlackBerry Devcon Asia in Bali last month but requested that it be kept private until now. In late January however, he tweeted that he was looking for executives to join a foreign internet based social shopping company though he wouldn’t name it publicly.
It’s clear that Multiply is looking to Southeast Asia for new growth. The company seems to to be following the steps of fellow early social network Friendster – now owned by Malaysian company MOL – in developing a new base in Southeast Asia, hoping to reinvent itself. With the explosion in social media usage and rapidly growing mobile internet adoption, who could blame them for giving the region a shot?
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