Peter Pezaris is the founder, President, and CEO of Multiply. Prior to Multiply, Peter served as CBS SportsLine.com's President of Operations and Product Development. He oversaw the operations of nfl.com, pgatour.com, cbs.sportsline.com, and mvp.com, which serve billions of pages annually to tens of millions of customers. He received his Bachelors in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University. Visit his Multiply site here.

What is Multiply, and what does it offer that other social networks do not?

Unlike the so-called "social networks" that most people are familiar with, where people create a presence online that is shared publicly with everyone using that site, Multiply is about sharing media (photos, videos, music, blogs, etc.) and discussion with the people who you know and are connected to in real life.

What makes Multiply unique is its distinctive message board, which alerts users to all new posts (such as photos albums and videos) being shared by people in their network. We refer to these alerts as multi-messages, because they can reach people who are multiple degrees away from you (think of the concept of "six degrees of separation") and involve them in discussions they wouldn't know about otherwise. These multi-messages also alert users when new replies are added to the posts they are most interested in (not just their own), fostering discussion within a user's true social network.

The entire Multiply site is designed to make the user the center of what's being shared and discussed by the user’s contacts and their contacts. So not only is the message board personalized for each user, but so are "tag clouds" - or keywords that identify popular topics being shared. Other sites focus on the most popular tags of all users on the system. However, for most people, seeing what topics are popular among their inner circle is more relevant and interesting.

Each Multiply user has a personal web site to share all types of digital media - with no upload limits. The user's site and the message board described above are integrated, providing a convenient way for people to share their lives with family and friends, all in one place.

What software and hardware power Multiply and why were they chosen?

Multiply is built on Linux, Apache, MySQL and Perl (sometimes referred to as LAMP). Our hardware is a mix of Cisco networking gear, Dell Bladecenters, NetApp filers and Apple's Xserve RAID devices. We find this combination to be cost effective, rock-solid when it comes to reliability, and able to scale well.

What do you see the social networking scene looking like a few years from now?

I think that most of the sites people think of as "social networks" are actually more entertainment destinations than useful tools for sharing. As such, people will always check out the latest for the novelty factor, but these sites will continue to come and go. In the long run people will "graduate" to services that provide more useful tools for sharing and communicating. Social networking will continue to evolve as the foundation for these tools. Multiply has already laid that groundwork.