PayPal restored sexy social network Zivity’s account tonight after a weeklong battle over whether the website violates its policy. Zivity bills itself as “Hotness. In Person” where “76,102 people just like you rub elbows with models, photographers, and video artists.” But early Thanksgiving morning, PayPal decided it didn’t want to rub elbows with Zivity anymore after four years of doing business together. → Read More
Zivity is a great site for women and photographers who aren’t afraid to get a little racy to express themselves and potentially be discovered. That said, they obviously don’t have the reach of something like Playboy. But thanks to a new partnership between the two, interested women can potentially get the best of both worlds.
Playboy will host a series of contests on Zivity, the winners of which will get to appear on Playboy.com. The Playboy community will choose themes for each of these contests. Here are some of the ones already being thrown out there: “Hottest Super Heroes,” “Show Your Lady Gaga,” “Suits and Stockings,” “Glistening Lips,” “Babes in Boots,” “Downy Hairs,” “Girls with Glasses” — you get the idea. → Read More
Venture backed adult site Zivity finally figured out that there’s a whole other market out there beyond guys (and a few women) who want to look at naked women. Lots of women (and a few men) apparently want to look at naked guys, too. So in a lightning bolt of marketing genius, they doubled their potential market size in a single blog post: Zividudes.
They’re taking nominations for who users want to see without their clothes on (topless for now). Once the list is set they’ll start going down the list to see who’s brave enough to say yes: “We’ll start with the top choice and work our way down until someone is brave enough to say yes! We’ll pay for the photo shoot by one of our top photographers, so the Zivity Dude will look *fantastic*.”
Who do you want to see shirtless? Twitter the name out with the hashtag #zividude and your vote will be counted. Early favorites include Kevin Rose, Chris Saad, Loren Feldman (although his wife is making the push), Jim Fishef and Sean Percival.
Let me know how it all turns out. And be on the lookout for Ashton Kutcher to try to steal the show. That guy will do anything for a little press. In fact, maybe Kutcher and Kevin Rose can do a dual bromance photoshoot? → Read More
In a highly unusual transaction, Zivity, a venture funded adult content startup, has spun off the majority of its assets, employees and venture funding into a new company called Top Fans. Zivity first launched at TechCrunch40 in 2007 and has raised a total of $8 million in venture capital.
Cofounder Cyan Banister takes the CEO spot at Zivity, which will continue to publish adult content. She also keeps Zivity-related software and other assets, two other employees and a portion of the $4 million or so that the company still has in bank.
Former Zivity CEO Jon Elvekrog will now become the CEO of Top Fans, and the remaining 7 employees will join him.
The original founding team of Zivity and the angel investors in their first round of financing are now the sole shareholders of Zivity. Venture funds BlueRun Ventures and The Founders Fund, who invested $7 million in Zivity in March 2008, will transfer their ownership to Top Fans. → Read More
Pop culture’s obsession with celebrities is evolving along with technology. Ashton Kutcher reached 1 million Twitter followers and Oprah is now part of the Twitterati. And there is never enough news or information about celebrities to satiate the thirst of fans; they want more and more insight into celebrities’ lives, especially online. The startup that created Zivity, the adult social network and media site which debuted at TechCrunch40, is hoping to create the next-generation of digital fan clubs with its new site, TopFans.com. The site lets fans create celebrity “fan pages,” and then add content, such as images, video, and news, to the fan page. And the celebrities can also interact with their pages by adding their own content, commenting on content and interacting with fans.
The pages themselves are similar in theory to a MySpace page or Facebook pages for celebrities, but TopFans hopes to differentiate itself in several ways. First, celebrities can directly import their Twitter feeds into their TopFans pages. Like on a Facebook fan page, there is the ability to import RSS feeds into an activity stream. But TopFans’ technology also crawls the web for news and images of the celebrity that will be imported into the main news feed on the page. Fans can also contribute comments and content to the site feed. The pages include a Digg-like button next to each piece of content that allows fans to vote whether they like the content or don’t like it. The highest rated content goes to the top of the feed. And unlike Facebook, where celebrities often have an “official” page and unofficial pages that have been created by fans, TopFans ensures celebrities that they only have one centralized page with no duplicates. Pages can be created by fans or the celebrities themselves. → Read More
Zivity, the adult social network and media site that describes itself as a “community-powered showcase of female beauty”, has laid off 1/3 of its staff, cutting back from 22 employees to 14. (Again, 1/3 seems to be the magic number – Jive and Seesmic have both laid off about a third of their staff in the last week).
Zivity is in a unique position as one of the only venture capital backed sites with “adult” content (i.e. nudity), and has raised a total of $8 million. Earlier this year the site scored Napster co-founder Jordan Ritter as its CTO. → Read More
Fake Shel interviews Zivity Cofounder Cyan Banister and, as usual, there’s a surprise at the end (although regular TechCrunch readers may not be so surprised). I’ve managed to stop laughing long enough to get this post up. Note: Not fully safe for work. And in fact a lot of you may be flat out offended. CrunchBase Information Zivity Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
San Francisco based Zivity, a self described “community-powered showcase of female beauty,” will add a high profile technologist to their executive team next week. Napster co-founder Jordan Ritter, who was subsequently the CTO of Cloudmark and Columbia Music Entertainment (and a man who enjoys wearing sunglasses indoors), will join Zivity as chief technology officer. Zivity continues to roll after their launch last September at TechCrunch40. They’ve raised a total of $8 million now over two rounds of financing and have successfully created a site that combines adult content with social networking. And the mainstream press is beginning to become as fascinated with Zivity as we have been since we first heard about them last August. Zivity remains invite only and has about 12,000 members, 70 models and 30 photographers. 30,000 people are on the waiting list to get in. CrunchBase Information Zivity Jordan Ritter Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Zivity is an adult content social network and user generated content site (they call it “Promoting Beauty 2.0″). It has the distinction of being one of the first adult content startups to be backed by venture capital via a $1 million seed round in 2007, and it caused quite a stir at its official launch at TechCrunch40. As we mentioned last month, mainstream press is starting to pay serious attention to them. The company will announce a new $7 million round of financing in a deal led by both BlueRun Ventures and Founders Fund. The company has now raised a total of $8 million. The social networking experience that these VCs add is substantial. Founders Fund is an early Facebook investor. Both are investors in Slide. John Malloy of BlueRun Ventures and Luke Nosek of Founders Fund join Zivity co-founders Scott Banister, Cyan Banister (who also models for the site) and Jeffrey Wescott on the company’s board of directors. The site allows both amateur and professional models and photographers to show their stuff. Users vote on those that they like, which channel real dollars to the talent. The more votes, the more money. The basic site is free, but users must pay to vote. About 40% of gross revenue is given directly to the talent. With a recent redesign, the site is focused much more on social networking – users and talent have profile pages and can add each other as friends. They’ve even added a news feed feature that shows who is adding who as friends, and which models users have voted for. Zivity remains in private beta (and will likely stay there until early 2009), although current users are given invitations to give to their friends. That means that most people joining the site today already know someone who’s using it, and can add them as a friend. In my “testing” of the site I noticed that the current users seem active in voting and friending. My guess is that building the community slowly but focusing on active users is a good way to go. And besides, anyone that really wants in can get an invitation on InviteShare. CrunchBase Information Zivity Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Zivity, the venture-backed adult content site, which we first covered in August 2007, is starting to get mainstream press attention – co-founder Scott Banister appeared on the Fox Business Channel late last year, and Forbes wrote a long piece on them last week. The service, which distributes payments to models and photographers based on user voting, is still in private beta. Today, though, they are giving away a bunch of accounts to TechCrunch readers – just be one of the first 1,000 people to email techcrunch@zivity.com and you’re in. Zivity will also be giving invitations to users to give to friends shortly, so we’ve added them to InviteShare. If you don’t get an account via the email above, add yourself there and someone will invite you as soon as the feature is turned on. Zivity launched at TechCrunch40 last Fall, and co-founder Cyan Banister is becoming somewhat famous since she isn’t just an employee – she also models for the site. CrunchBase Information Zivity Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
I wrote two weeks ago that Zivity founder Cyan Banister was not just an executive at her adult-focused photography startup, she was beginning to model for it as well. At the time, though, she was still partially clothed. Now, she’s starting to go “full monty.” She appears topless in five photos included in a new set titled “When in Paris.” I’ve included one (censored) image above. Shocking? Somewhat. But as I said before, at least she’s eating her own dog food by modeling for the site. She doesn’t just do this to promote the site, though. It’s also a form of self expression. In an email she says “I don’t take my clothes off just to promote Zivity. I also do it for the model community and for myself. I want to change how people view nudity and beauty in the same way major television shows opened our minds about other issues…I really enjoy being on Zivity and being nude and sexy in photographs is enjoyable! I look at my photos and I smile. That’s my body. I can do what I want with it. It is beautiful. Nobody can take that away from me.” “I started Zivity because I believe in empowerment business models that enable people to be entrepreneurial,” she added. Whatever the reasons, people like her pictures. She’s currently no. 8 on the list of top models. Banister is also doing other photo sets that are being added to Flickr. See the NOT SAFE FOR WORK images here and here as examples. Zivity has a unique business model that pays models and photographers directly based on the number of user votes they receive. The more votes, the higher they go on the leaderboard and the more money they make. About 40% of gross revenue is given directly to the talent. They first launched at the TechCrunch40 Conference last Fall. The company raised $1 million in seed funding in August 2007. Zivity is still in private beta and slowly adding the 20,000 or so people on the waiting list. CrunchBase Information Zivity Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Zivity is definitely one of the most controversial startups of 2007. It’s the first (as far as we know) adult site to have received Silicon Valley backing, including an announced $1 million angel round. And they certainly livened things up at the TechCrunch40 conference a few months ago. They went last, and their demo contained enough nudity to make much of the crowd shift uneasily in their chairs. But that isn’t the end of the controversy. The site, which we first covered in August, allows models to upload photos to the site and gain followers. As people vote for models, real dollars flow to the model and photographers who were involved in the shoot. And one of those models is co-founder Cyan Banister. She’s uploaded one set of photos for the beta period, without nudity. Next week, she says she’ll add another set that includes topless photos, and may go completely nude in the future. Banister says that a few years ago she would not have even considered taking her clothes off for a camera. But she isn’t new to getting attention for her looks. In 2000, when she was just 22, she won the “Sexiest Geek Alive” award. When starting Zivity, though, she knew she had to, as she puts it, “eat her own dog food.” For most founders that just means actually using their own product. But for Cyan, it also means taking off her clothes and modeling for Zivity. So how popular is she with users? The beta has just 500 users so far. Cyan has gathered 25 votes, putting her on the leaderboard of the most popular models. But she’s still well behind the no. 1 model, “Pearl,” who has 117 votes. Expect more news on Zivity in the next several weeks. They are expanding their beta users (this will be a popular one for our readers), and will soon let in more of the 20,000 people who have signed up to get a look at the site. Lots of founders say they’re willing to eat their own dog food to support their startup. But how many will shed their clothes? Zivity was also one of the 100 startups nominated for the Crunchies Startup Awards in January. CrunchBase Information Zivity Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Porn is big business, and the industry has been quick to adapt by copying successful features of new consumer Internet sites. But one thing we haven’t seen until now: respected Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors taking a direct interest in funding or running these sites. The potential payoff from a successful adult site is clearly too high for Silicon Valley to continue to ignore the space, though. And San Francisco-based Zivity is going to be the first experiment out the door. The founders say Zivity isn’t porn, but that certainly depends on how you define the term. The primary content of the site is naked female models. The company’s founders include Scott Banister, a co-founder of the recently acquired IronPort, as well as other technology veterans. CEO Jeffrey Wescott led security software architecture and scalability at IronPort, and co-founder Cyan Banister was also an IronPort exec. They’ve raised $1 million in funding, although they aren’t yet disclosing any investors other than Banister. Rumor has it that a number of former paypal execs may have invested. Like Suicide Girls, Zivity is a social network surrounding pictures of attractive women. Users can log in and join the network and view non-nude photos for free. If they want have the clothes taken off, it costs $10 per month. Paying users get 5 votes per month to give away to models that they like. And every vote from a user is money in the pocket of the model and photographer – they get 80 cents per vote received. The default split is 60 cents to the model and 20 cents to the photographer, but that can be negotiated by models and photographers who’ve achieved a certain level of status in the system. This is where Zivity differs substantially from Suicide Girls, which pays its models a flat fee for their content. The company is keeping the look and feel of the site under wraps for now, but did send me the screen shot I’ve included here. They also confirmed this is a Flash interface for viewing the photos, although the site itself is built on Rails. Zivity is raising a second, larger round of financing now, and will launch later this year. Beta accounts are slowing being given out now. Previous Adult/Porn coverage on TechCrunch – see PornoTube, Eroshare, Heatseak (porn browser), Socialporn and others. → Read More
