There's been recent clamor about Multiply incorporating a blast, both in MUDS and in Refugees here. While the one on 360 is nice, I'd like to offer a potential counter-point.

First, I suggest you open up my Multiply page --> zebaron.multiply.com

Second, I'm going to give you some knowladge if you don't know what I'm going to talk about. A blast on 360 looked something like this... go HERE to my 360 page. At the top, the the brownish rectangle where I have information about my leaving 360 for Multiply, is the blast. This could be used for displaying your favorite quotes, telling visitors to your page a quick notice ("I'm leaving 360," "I'll be out of town," etc) or it could be used for directing people to an outside link. If a link to an Mp3 file were put in the link section a "Play" icon was displayed there. There is also a feature to reply to the user via a PM, though this could be turned off.

Blast updates were fed into your friend's "Home" page, an equivalent of Multiply's "My Multiply" area. While this was nice, in some cases, for receiving updates, it was usually bothersome because it forced blog content down. Some users only used their blast to advertise their page, which was very annoying.

Here on Multiply, we don't have a explict feature like that. However, if you go to my Multiply page (HERE), look where I have the American proverb. That is called the site title. Initially, I used the site title I used on 360, but I later abandoned that in leiu of this idea... using that area as a blast of sorts. To change it, you go to "Customize this page" below your welcome message, hit "edit" in that module, and then change it. I've found that it takes about the same amount of time to change that here as it did to change a blast there.

Some users have suggested using the "Welcome" area as a blast. On my page, that area is titled with "Willkommen" and lists the "About Me" that I moved from 360. This feature would be good for a blast as well, though I chose the above option because the site title is in a much larger font.

If Multiply wishes to accomadate the cries of the 360 users who want a blast, they could do that very easily. Instead of adding an entire new module to clog people's blogs (that rhymes!), simple changes to the site title could fix that. The easiest way to do that would be to add a box to user’s “My Multiply” page similar to the one on 360, shown to the right.

[This feature would enable you to edit your blast from your 'home' page, the equivalent of your 'My Multiply' page.]

That way, Multiply would not need to change any modules on our pages, saving the integrity and the streamlined look, while giving us a more accessible way to change our “blast,” per se.

I personally do not want Multiply to bend to everything requested. This is Multiply, not 360. We left 360 for a reason… if we try to mold our new home to look like our old one, what have we truly done?

I am ashamed that people would demand this and that and this on MUDS and Multiply Customer Service. A friend has told me about the goings-on in the posts of MCS. I implore you to please be decent and please, please, do not post another blog on the same topic at any of these groups if there is not a new one.

While we may be citizens of this community, we don’t have the right to charge in here and pretend we’re calling the shots. For now, try and implement my suggestions above, and if Multiply deems a blast a good thing, they’ll add it.

Personally, I don’t want a blast. While I liked having one, the way that the site title is set up works better, in my opinion. And, on the bright side, the site title accepts HTML, something 360’s blast did not.

If you’ve got any questions about my suggestions here, you can send me a PM or leave it in the comments. Please, though, don’t trash Multiply’s official groups.

The poll that has been posted at MUDS can be found HERE.

-Ze Baron

Well... I'm amazed again.

I sent a letter a few days ago to the Multiply Customer Service (CS) asking them if they could help me out. I changed the logo for Y!360 Refugees a week or two back, but it still had not changed on the user's page to the new logo. After about three days (now today) I got a reply:

"Hi Baron,

We're having a look into the cause of this issue, and will let you know when it's been corrected. In the meantime, I'm sorry for any inconvenience this might cause.

If you have any further questions, please let us know.

Roy"

I was a little disappointed by this, and I sent a letter to the friend who suggested I contact CS. I said I was a bit disappointed, but at least they were looking into it. She told me to keep watching the problem and that it could be fixed soon. I went and checked on my page... and lo and behold, the new logo was there! Whoo-hoo!

If you cannot see the new logo on your page, the CS rep told me you may have to clear your cache.

Alexa.com is a reputable website that tracks

the hits of other web sites, usually community-oriented pages.  Right now, Yahoo.com is at the top of the leaderboard, where it's been for quite some time. Google.com, YouTube.com, Live.com, and MSN.com fall in behind it to round out the top five. MySpace.com, Facebook.com, and Wikipedia.org follow them. You can find the top 20 HERE.

I decided to check some things out. I went and looked up Multiply.com. You can find the results for that HERE.

Notice in mid-October, after a small decline, Multiply suddenly got a lift, and is continuing to lift. What happened in mid-October? The Y!360 Team blew us off with their apathy and announcement of 360’s closing. This is when the pe

ople started fleeing… myself included. The average user visited 15.4 unique pages whilst on Multiply.

This is the graph for yahoo.com. Realize that it is not the graph for 360.yahoo.com, since 360 is a portal of Yahoo’s and cannot be counted separately via Alexa. The page for Yahoo! can be found HERE. 

Notice that there is a hump there in early- to mid-October where Yahoo!’s traffic slumped off. Yahoo! had a 1% decline in page views over the last three months. Multiply had a 3% gain. I doubt that the fleeing of refugees touched Yahoo!’s traffic, but it appears we certainly did Multiply’s.

It also says that 47% of visitors to Yahoo! go to mail.yahoo.com. 13% go to search.yahoo.com. 5% go to 360.yahoo.com. These are the top three portals, mind you! It’s also amusing: 1% of Multiply users go to customizedthemes.multiply.com. That must be one big group!

HERE is an article from techcrunch.com, showing page hits for social sites. It lists them in order of growth. Topping the charts is Imeem.com, followed by aim.com, digg.com, facebook.com, and flickr.com. Xanga.com is at the bottom. You guessed it: Yahoo! 360 is the second last, losing 51% of it’s traffic over the last year. In 9/06, 360 had 5,697,000 unique visitors. In 9/07, 360 had 2,774,000 unique visitors. That probably sealed it’s fate for Mr. Yang, even though 360 was the third most-visited portal of Yahoo!.

The Multiply team has announced a major upgrade for security/privacy. To read about it, go HERE. This should help people fix their settings sweepingly as opposed to doing it one by one.

Well, that’s all I’ve got to say – except, if you haven’t joined Y!360 Refugees, and you’re a refugee, I’d suggest you do so, pronto! There is plenty of help and a warm community of similarly displaced users. (Of course, who am I to tout it? I’m the founder!)

-Ze Baron

I'm not one for doing dares, but Anne (Wench) and Beverly and Zoya and a few other people stayed up last night using one of the blogs as a "chat room" of sorts. They were all very excited that Multiply updates the comments
as you type, whereas Yahoo! would stick others in before you without telling you.

Well, they were joking "Ahh, funny!" "Poor Baron" etc. It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye... then it's hilarious. There were, dunno, 200 comments there. Every time they posted one, EVERYONE in the group who had their settings set as such received an email alert.

They spammed 600 people without knowing it.

Wench ponders, "Baron loves me. He won't kick me out of the group. Will he?"
Zoya proclaims, "he won't read it all!"
Wench dares, "He'll read every word. And then he'll blog it. In fact, BARON!! IF YOU READ      THIS, I DARE YOU TO BLOG ABOUT IT!"
Suddenly, though, Wench realizes "but he'll have all these messages in his email inbox.
    OMG - anyone who subscribes to this group is getting spammed right now."
Beverly claims, "The gun.....I thought she had a gun in her hand......at least that's what it     looked like to me...I thought it was best just to humor her and play along...."

Well, I'll tell you:

Wench, I love ya... I won't.
Zoya, I will.
Wench, I accept.
And Wench, you just did.
No, Bev, it was a rum bottle, and you knew that. You wouldn't have tried to drink out of a gun.

Revenge is sweet.

-Ze Baron

Read the comments on THIS blog. User "dave" is the product-development vice-prez here on Multiply. Read his comment!!!

Reposted from the page of the wonderful Wench of Aramink, the dear friend who referred me to Multiply. Her blog can be found HERE.

David Hersh is the Vice President of Business Development here at Multiply.com.
He's in charge of project and product management, as well as business development.

Just moments ago, Dave announced on the Multiply Users and Developers Group that "[a]n import from 360 will be ready in the next couple of days. Stay tuned for an announcement on the staff blog." He also said that the original post date would "absolutely be retained."

This is fantastic news. Hold off importing blogs for a couple of days and wait for the introduction of the import tool. The moving company is on its way!

More will be added as I find the original entry and more information regarding this wonder tool. -Ze Baron

Start:	Jan 1, '08 12:00a
End:	Jan 1, '08 12:00p
Location:	360.yahoo.com

This is the day when our beloved 360 is laid to rest by the evil corporate greed that is Yahell. All should be in attendence. We'll walk out on them for Multiply officially on this date.

It's an eerie story of the past, present, and future of Y!360, just in time for Halloween!

It's my Yahoo! 360 profile. I like it, I love it, I want some more of it! I just wish they'd fix it...

Well, this is the first blog. I like the tools they have here. This site seems very nice, though a bit klunky. Themes are hard to set up (you have to know HTML) but this site integrates social networking and blogging in a similar way to Yahoo! 360. I think this is the place to be if we need to all run from you-know-where.

-Ze Baron