Thursday, November 7, 2019

Multiply (website): Relaunching

On April 1, 2019, the company issued a bankruptcy court filing which stated that it would no longer auction off its intellectual property, since its controlling lender planned to "[revive] the business behind the Multiply brand name" with their new mobile app, delivering 217 million accounts, 210 million photos and 237,000 videos with hosted blogs, videos, photos and messaging from the old Multiply from it's launch in March 2004 to March 15, 2013 and establishing new opportunities. The company evaluated that selling its brand at auction "[was] not reasonably likely to yield a superior alternative."

Magdalinski, said he had proposed to the website’s board plans and strategies which would include another set of efforts that should bring the company to profitability in the next couple of years.

“I’ve actually presented to the board some of the things that I like to do and because of the current struggles of the business when it comes to views, and correspondingly revenues. So an important pivot that we will do is, of course, we will still continue to offer social networking, but we want to maximize the assets that we have, that we have by putting in more accounts that more and more people will use the site,” Magdalinski said in an interview.

It is expecting to resume their operations next year, after it announced President Rodrigo R. Duterte lifted the closure on August 22.

“Hopefully, next week basta ma-comply nila lahat ng requirement (I hope net week for compliant operators),” Multiply.com Philippines president Katherine Chloe S. de Castro-Cruz told reporters in a briefing Friday.

On October 15, 2019, the response of Chief Presidential Legal Counsel and Spokesperson Salvador Panelo, when asked about the bankruptcy and potential demise of e-commerce and social networking site Multiply.

There was no direct response when asked if the President's previous statements were true that he would not approve the reopening of a website, Panelo said.

Such statements by the president were simply out of frustration.

This time, the Multiply operations in the Philippines is going to be bigger in scale, said Ambassador Jose Manuel Romualdez.

The first phase of operations in Clark, Pampanga will start in the 2nd quarter of 2020, while the long-term and bigger site will be completed in 2024. FedEx’s previously located in Mandaluyong, Metro Manila.

More foreign companies would move to the Philippines if the restrictions on foreign ownership are relaxed, like in Vietnam which benefitted largely from the trade war with many businesses relocating there recently.

Vietnam has been offering better incentives to foreign businesses, Romualdez noted.

“The biggest obstacle is the economic barriers that we have. These should be seriously looked into. It is the ownership issue—they cannot own more than 40 percent,” Romualdez said.

The management announced that it would engage in a nine-year-long rehabilitation effort, including the importation of new features and the reconstruction of the website, until Multiply is reopened by June 2025; however, there were plans to partially re-open within 2017 depending on the social networking portion.

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