Multiply Inc., a new entrant into the search market, hopes to popularize a new concept in results relevancy. By searching not only for terms but also for relationships among the results, the searcher, and his or her social contacts, the company intends to provide users with results that have personal meaning.
For example, "If you are planning a vacation to Rome, a search on Multiply may yield a photo album taken by your cousin's neighbor during his vacation, and a blog entry written by your co-worker's nephew when he was backpacking through Europe," according to Peter Pezaris, Multiply's founder and chief executive. "People [will] turn to Multiply first as an information resource because search results are more personal, trusted, and interesting than what one would find in a generic Web search on sites such as Google and Yahoo. Multiply is the only place you can find these types of personal search results."
According to an August 2004 study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, "the use of search engines usually ranks second only to email as the most popular online activity." Multiply is counting on the combined popularity of search engines and Web-based social networking to give its product an initial boost—a boost it may sorely need because it asks users to do something no other search engine requires: register and provide a list of contacts.
“Just add your contacts – like you would in an address book – and then they'll add their contacts, and so on,” the company explains on its home page. “That's when our exclusive ‘multi-messages’ can work their magic, letting you communicate with everyone in your network, and keeping you in the loop when someone you know posts new photos or anything else!”
Multiply’s search algorithm uses the company’s proprietary proximity index as well as traditional ranking systems when sorting results. Rather than measure how socially close people are only by "degrees of separation," as many other social networks do, Multiply takes into consideration numerous real-world dynamics such as the true relationships between people (wife, roommate, co- worker, etc.) and the number of mutual relationships two people may share.
"On Multiply my spouse is considered socially closer than an acquaintance that I've only associated with online, and somebody that five of my friends know is closer than someone that only one friend knows," says Pezaris. "Because relationships actually mean something on Multiply, search results do, too."
Since search results are presented with a description of the relationship between the content producer and the searcher, a comfortable forum for discussion is created, Pezaris insists. To that end, Multiply gives registered members their own home pages with personalized URLs (e.g., http://yourname.multiply.com/), 1 gigabyte of storage space, and a personalized message board for communicating and sharing thoughts with other members.
