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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → Read More
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
San Francisco, CA
Berlin, Germany
Boston, MA
