DEAR MULTIPLY: THIS SUCKS

We've reached a breaking point.

Yesterday I received a message from a good friend on Multiply. I replied. Today I went to read his reply, and I noticed a queer little "P" under his avatar. I wondered what it was for a few seconds, but then I shivered as it came to me: Premium.

When Multiply first came to the prospects of having this upgraded service, they started asking for names and received all sorts of answers. I suggested some that were probably too pathetic to be taken seriously, but I left them with the somber warning to be sure never to let Multiply become a class-ruled caste society where the Premium members would be so noticeably different than regular members. That would create a community of discontent, where one group would be elevated over the other. I did not want that for Multiply.

I am sure you remember the "Featured Bloggers" on 360. I spit those two words out every time I think of it. While most of those bloggers were personally amiable, the rest had extremely inflated opinions of themselves. This was what I feared would happen.

Today, it has begun.

I can understand paying for extra features that would directly cost Multiply money, such as no ads, extra bytes on their servers in the form of hi-res pics, et cetera, but paying for perks that are negligible like the little "Multiply Premium" under the headshot and the golden "P" are going beyond what is reasonable for this service.

While some Multipliers are paying for this just to up the Joneses -- a group I think is small in number -- most just want the benefits that being a Multiply Premium member provides. They don't want glory, they don't want recognition, they want more bandwidth, gigabytes, and ad-less surfing!

It's wrong to elevate these bloggers to a higher plane in such a way that it isolates the rest of the unprivledge populace. When, before, have superficial yellow labels been used to signify class? It was in the dark days preceding the Holocaust when Jews as young as six were forced by Nazi rule to wear yellow stars as a mark of shame.

Ultimately, Multiply has botched up by creating a hierarchy among its members. There remains no chance that I will upgrade to the Multiply Premium service. While I understand a corporation has to be profitable, they also have to maintain a happy clientle. If they concentrate on the Premium users instead of keeping this the great free service it is, I might have to find a new place to blog.

Ze Baron