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After establishing itself in Indonesia earlier this year, one of the world’s largest social networking sites wants to expand its workforce by four times and bring 100,000 local merchants into the site by the end of this year.

Multiply, which combines social networking and an online marketplace, has about 2 million active users in Indonesia and more than 35,000 merchants on its site. It brings in about 20 million unique visitors each month, about 7 million of which come from Indonesia.

“We just released Multiply Commerce on May 10, and within a week there were already 1,000 transactions happening through our payment gateway,” Daniel Tumiwa, the country manager for Multiply Indonesia, said on the sidelines of the Multiply Commerce launch on Wednesday.

“This year is the time for online transactions to take off in Indonesia,” he said. “On average, we have about 2,000 new merchants every month who upload about 50,000 new products per month.”

Multiply, launched in August 2004, was started as a social networking site for families and friends before Facebook existed.

Once users began utilizing the site to sell their products online, though, it decided to expand into an online marketplace. In September last year, the Myriad International Holdings unit of Naspers Limited acquired a controlling interest in Multiply.

It established a subsidiary in Indonesia last March and currently employs 37 people. The company plans to move to a large office in South Jakarta next week, in line with its plan to hire 150 employees by the end of this year.

Peter Pezaris, co-founder and chief executive of Multiply, visited Jakarta in February and said the US company was committed to make Indonesia its anchor market.

“By next year, Indonesia will be our biggest office, even bigger than the one in the US,” Pezaris said. Multiply’s office in Jakarta is its third after the US and the Philippines.

According to Daniel, more than 90 percent of the transactions in the site took place offline.

“I don’t know exactly how many transactions happened so far, but based on our internal survey, the average value per transaction is about Rp 150,000 [$17.50],” he said.

“One of the keys of ecommerce is trust and recommendations,” said Andy W. Djiwandono, vice president for marketing and business development at Multiply Indonesia. “That is why we established ‘trusted seller.’ ”

Although users can register as members for free, the company provides several options for premium accounts.

“At first I was selling stuff in Multiply just for fun. Within a short period of time, my business grew and now I am more serious about selling baby products and eco-friendly products,” said Anita, one of Multiply’s sellers who joined the site about two years ago.

Most of the sellers on the site, Daniel said, are women and people trying to earn extra income despite already working full-time jobs.

Multiply’s revenue streams come from advertising, premium memberships and commissions for each transaction completed through its payment gateway.

“We charge 3.9 percent for every transaction that is using our shopping cart,” Daniel said, adding that the most popular payment system was KlikBCA.

The site also supports other bank transactions and credit card payments through PayPal.