Multiply.com, a social network for users who find Facebook and MySpace a bit too free-wheeling, has reeled in $16.6 million in series B funding, the company said Friday.
The funding round, led by VantagePoint Venture Partners and joined by Point Judith Capital and prior investor Transcosmos Investments, will be used to add hardware to accommodate the posts of Multiply’s more than 6 million registered users.
Though Multiply’s web site fits squarely in the social-networking mainstream, its features are aimed at users who want to circulate photos, videos and blog posts within a walled garden of friends and relatives rather than venture into the Facebook and MySpace toga parties.
“To the demographic of people like me—30-plus and older with closeknit friends, Multiply is a real solution,” said Sean Marsh, general partner of Point Judith Capital, who joined the company’s board of directors.
“I have a daughter at home who just learned to walk,” said Peter Pezaris, chief executive of Multiply. “I can take a video of her and share it on my site. I don’t want to necessarily share that with the whole world. If I have a photo album of the Empire State Building, I might want to share that with the whole world. Your life isn’t a light switch. You don’t want to have your whole life public or your whole life private.”
Mr. Pezaris was one of a group of onetime classmates at Carnegie Mellon who decided over a round of beers in Manhattan to leave their jobs at investment banks and found a fantasy sports statistics service. That service, Commissioner.com, was acquired by SportsLine.com in 1999 for $46 million.
After the acquisition, the team worked at SportsLine.com, but eventually struck out on their own again, founding Multiply.com in 2003.
Mr. Pezaris said that while Multiply supports some widgets, he is leery of opening the site to developers who could overload users with third-party software.
“There are no fewer than five ‘top friend’ applications on Facebook,” he said. “That’s awesome for younger people who want to try all the bells and gadgets, but it’s antithetical to our approach where people are leveraging their real-world relationships.”
Also joining Multiply’s board of directors is David Scott Carlick, managing director of VantagePoint and former chairman of Intermix Media, the parent of MySpace. In 2005, Mr. Carlick helped cut the $580 million cash deal that gave Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. control of Intermix and MySpace, which now has about 200 million registered users.