June 4, 2009, at 6:46 am

Category: Internet

I was surprised when I visited my Multiply site this afternoon. Oooh, Multiply 4.0 is up. (Click on the thumbnail to view the full image.) But hey, that means I have to edit the CSS code because they changed the layout again! Geez, the last time I edited my Multiply layout was in 2007.

I was impressed with the new Inbox, for it is a lot cleaner than the previous ones. It reminds me a bit of Wikispaces. It is now a lot easier to view your contacts, and you now have the option to choose your favorite contacts. What for? For easy access to his or her updates, of course. And wow, you now have easy access to all of your personal messages. Nice.

They also added the Media Locker tab. This contains your shared photos and videos, and it is a lot easier to edit your albums with this new layout. This tab also contains a list of all of your posts, and I noticed that they made it easier to change the privacy settings of your posts. And it appears that if you change the privacy settings, your post will not appear on other people’s inbox. This was a big problem of the previous versions of Multiply, usually leading to a flood of posts from a person who made his old entries private. Also, you can easily create photo books, calendars, cards and prints from your Media Locker. It’s not free, though.

Another new feature they added is the Custom Filter. You can have easy access to all of your posts, posts you have replied on, your subscribed posts, and you can even flag your posts with this new feature. Unfortunately, it is not that easy to create a custom filter.

If you want to see the posts from your high school batchmates, for example, you have to type the names of the individuals you want to include in this filter. I was hoping that they would adopt what they did with the Saved List feature, where you have a list of all of your contacts and you select the individuals by clicking on the names.

Another new feature they added is the Quick Note, which is similar to the Facebook status or to a Plurk or a Twitter. Turns out that they revived and repackaged the Note feature. I already forgot they had this, I was surprised to find notes I’ve written five years ago. But before, the notes have titles and contents like your usual blog entries. (This is probably the reason why I stopped using notes, since I end up posting my notes as blog entries.) Now, the notes are similar to tweets or plurks. Microblogging in Multiply! But I am annoyed with the way Multiply displays these notes in the site. Compare the following notes, one written a few hours ago (Multiply 4.0) and the other written almost 3 years ago (pre-Multiply 4.0):

Call me OC, but isn’t it annoying to see just a title with no content?

EDIT: Ah, now I found the dividing line between new updates and the updates you’ve read since your last visit. They made it smaller so it is easy to miss. I wish they just used the old one, though. Or at least, make this divider a bit more visible.

Anyway, I like the changes they made in Multiply 4.0 (aside from the minor annoyances I mentioned). This is the only social network I belong to where I know everyone in my Contacts list. They still require you to join Multiply to add comments, but I don’t mind.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Tags: Multiply, social network