Multiply’s Goodbye note on their website

Social shopping site Multiply.com is officially closing down on May 6, 2013. The announcement was posted on their website and an e-mail from their CEO, Stefan Magdalinski was also sent out to media partners. This is quite unfortunate considering they’ve really tried their best to reinvent themselves as a social shopping website for Filipinos in the last few months.

Here’s the official statement:

JAKARTA (Friday, April 26, 2013) — It is with deep regret that today we are announcing the closure of Multiply on May 6, 2013 and ceasing all business operations as of May 31, 2013.

“About a year ago, our local Multiply teams were given the mighty challenge of totally re-inventing the company,” said Stefan Magdalinski, Multiply CEO. “After much effort, we are forced to admit that we were not able to pull it off. I’m proud of my team for their diligence and determination, despite the disappointing outcome.”

Multiply will maintain normal site operations through May 6th, at which point the marketplace will close, and will wind down operations throughout the month of May to provide its merchants time to find and migrate to alternative ecommerce platforms, settle all payments on items bought and delivered, and generally minimize disruption to our merchants’ businesses.

In the meantime, Multiply’s shareholder MIH remains very optimistic about ecommerce in Indonesia and the Philippines and has recently increased its investment into its successful general classifieds businesses there — namely Tokobagus.com (Indonesia) and Sulit.com.ph (Philippines) who are #1 in each of their respective markets.

To Jack Madrid and the rest of the good folks over at Multiply.com, we wish you guys all the best. Given the caliber of your talent we’re pretty sure you guys will be okay.

Digital analytics is serious business

I chanced upon this interview of IBM Philippines President Mariels Almeda Winhoffer on ANC’s website. In the clip she talked about how BPOs should “level-up” their businesses by offering services that revolve around data analytics including social media and other aspects of the digital realm. The news report then goes on to expound that analytics is set to be $160 billion industry by 2015.

The idea of systems and processes suppliers like IBM coming up with digital analytics products isn’t farfetched especially since the per hour rate of social media specialists and analysts is much higher than usual call center jobs. A quick search over job listing sites show that analysts and community managers usually earn double the amount of usual VA/support work. This means that the BPO companies stand to earn much more on an hourly rate versus their usual e-mail and call support core services.

Data Analysts as a career path for Online Pinoy Freelancers
With BPOs moving to this segment the first group of people who will feel the impact are probably freelancers. Obviously there will still be a market for freelancers despite big BPOs entering the pictures but this opens up the option for freelancers to get into longterm corporate jobs should they choose to join a company. Win-win since they have a good chance of landing senior positions (even trainer positions) and the BPO gets the right people for the job.

What’s interesting is that there seems to be little interest (or maybe because it’s done in secret lol) from local agencies to come up with products and services like this themselves. If you think about it local digital agencies already have the talent, expertise, and even network (especially if they belong to a multinational network) to launch a BPO specializing on digital analytics and services. I have a strong feeling that we’ll be seeing agencies announce BPO-type units in the next few months to try and capture a percentage of this growing market.

Watch the complete news report here

Hope to see you guys there!

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I’m currently going over COMELEC Resolution No. 9615 which spells out the rules and regulations for the “Fair Election Act”. This is the first time that COMELEC included digital platforms in their rules so it’s important that we take a look into this as an industry and try to help them revise and craft better rules if needed.

Personal Opinons are exempted

Before we get into a discussion on the COMELEC infringing on our freedom of expression, let’s note that in Section 1. Definitions our fundamental rights are protected. It says:

Personal opinons, views, and preferences for candidates, contained in blogs shall not be considered acts of election campaigning or partisan political activity unless expressed by government officials in the Executive Department, the Legislative Department, the Judiciary, the Constitutional Commissions, and the members of Civil Service.

Two thumbs up to COMELEC for spelling this out clearly in the resolution.

Provision on online ads appearing only three times a week per website

What I found weird is the provision on online election propaganda, section 9 c. Here’s what it says:

Said online advertisement, whether procured by purchase, or given free of charge, shall not be published more than three times a week per website during the campaign period. For this purpose, the exhibition or display of the online advertisement for any length of time, regardless of frequency, within a 24 hours period, shall be construed as one instance of publication.

I have a few questions about this. For example, what if I am a supporter and I have a site and I want to put a banner ad on my sidebar. Does that mean I have to take it down 4 days out of the week to comply with the 3-instance rule? Or does this rule apply only to commercial sites and publications?

Another issue I foresee is that this obviously doesn’t take into account how ad networks operate. The exact timing of the appearance of the ad is not fully in the control of the advertiser… unless we’re forced to set budget and just make sure they run in three-day periods and not have ads running for the balance week.

Lastly, what if ads are placed by supporters? Facebook and Google are self-service ad platforms. Anybody can just put up an ad there to support a candidate. Does that count to the 3-instance rule? @_@

Facebook Ads copy will be littered with “Paid for by…”

Section 7 A. states:

It shall likewise be unlawful to publish, print or distribute campaign materials unless they bear and are identified by the reasonably legible or audible words “political advertisements paid by,” followed by the true and correct name and address of the payor.

For Facebook Ads we only have 90 characters for the body text. Just the initial “political advertisements paid by” is 32 characters already. That doesn’t even include the name and address of the payor.

Website owners and publishers need to submit Reports and Certificates to COMELEC

Now this is important for publishers, bloggers, website owners, agencies, etc. There’s a need now to submit reports to COMELEC to confirm the frequency of the ads. It should have frequency, date, time, and duration.

For the above purpose, each broadcast entity and website owner or administrator shall submit to the Commissiona certified true copy of its broadcast logs, certificates of performance, or other analogous record, including certificates of acceptance as required in section 7(b) of these guidelines, for the review and verification of the frequency, date, time, and duration of advertisements aired for any candidate or party through:

Still digesting everything else

I’m still going over the rules but these are my initial thoughts so far. What do you guys think? Click here to download full document of COMELEC Resolution No. 9615.