Multiply.com was once the Philippines' ubiquitous social media site during its heyday, but it has now rebranded itself as a local marketplace for its biggest users – The Philippines and Indonesia.
Multiply started in 2003 as a small social networking service geared for personal sharing and connection to family and friends. It didn’t click well in the US (unlike MySpace at that time) but it surprisingly got popular in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, which accounts for the 39% of the site’s traffic. It’s got so big that even ABS-CBN invested $5 million for a multi-year ad deal.
But in the world of the World Wide Web, or at least the business of social networking sites, nothing is permanent. Just as Friendster rebranded itself as a social gaming portal and MySpace as a music and peer discovery tool, Multiply was put into a spot where its users dictated the evolution and eventual future of the site as a social marketplace.
The old logo had 5 people icons (beating MySpace by 2 heads) showing that it’s a site with lots of people and connections to be made. The old typeface already seemed to have made a brand of itself without the gradient heads but killing the ‘social sharing’ feature of the website made these ‘head connections’ a little less relevant.
The new logo introduces a new iconic stylized M which looks like a shopping banig bag. The tiled colorful weave patterns wrapping the letter M has a similar look used by our tourism campaign maybe conveying a fun, colorful and diverse - thriving marketplace.
The old typeface was also retained with subtle changes on the thickness and flow. I like the new type just because I had no problem with the original one. Besides, it was already a familiar (using it loosely) type mark locally for such a common word. Would be a waste to radically change it just for the sake of changing.
I personally liked the old Multiply before since it made selling easier thru social connections. I‘m not selling there anymore so I wouldn’t know but from the looks of early feedbacks, actual and current sellers aren’t digging the new website and ecommerce implementation.
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Addendum:
Just sharing the concept made by Plus63 Design Co. c/o Dan Matutina on his Facebook account. Their concept was centered on an X logo mark which actually makes sense for Multiply. Thanks for sharing this Dan!
Without the blue lines of course :)
X Marks The Shop - The marque is a combination of different visuals that represent a unique buying experience. Multiply is a treasure trove of great finds, products and items. It’s also a great place for merchants to “multiply” their earnings.
