Zivity, an adult social network, raises $1M before launch

August 16, 2007 | Matt Marshall | Comments | |

zivity-8-8-16.jpgZivity, a new adult social network start-up, has raised a $1 million round of seed capital from Silicon Valley investors — as it prepares for launch.

It’s not a porn site, such as the newer sites Eroshare (pictures) or Pornotube (vidoes). Rather, it likens itself to a mixture of MySpace and Playboy magazine with popularity/voting features thrown in. It says it focuses on pinup-like photography, or so-called “fine art erotica.” It invites regular woman — such as the local Starbucks barista — to submit photo shots.

Zivity is based on voting system. Paying subscribers vote on the images of women they like, and Zivity passes on a portion of the subscription revenue to the most popular women. There will be some free content to lure users, however you’ll have to subscribe to do things like leave messages for models. There will be blogs, and other social networking features, but video will be rolled out much later, if at all, according to the company.

A representative said a comparable site is Suicide Girls (brace yourself if you click on the link), only with fewer tattoos, less tongue-rings. Models will also not be as locked into the extensive contracts governing the Suicide Girls.

Several former PayPal executives are among the investors. Zivity is run by former execs and employees at Ironport Systems, a company bought by Cisco for $830 million earlier this year. When you’ve made it, what else is there left to do in life than launch an adult site? Jeffrey Wescott, an former Ironport engineer, is chief executive; Cyan Banister, who led Ironport’s customer support, is co-founder. Her husband Scott Banister, co-founder at Ironport is an advisor and investor in the company.

It is apparently based on ruby+rails, python, and/or perl, according to its job list.

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About the Author, Matt Marshall

Matt Marshall is editor and CEO of VentureBeat. Follow him on Twitter at @mmarshall, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • Would I pay for the privilege of voting for these pin-ups? I wouldn't. But I know there is a segment of population that will. The key is to nail down the pricing point where it is at the equilibrium. I love the monetized business model right out of the gate. Good job.

    Here's my post.
  • Don't you have better things to cover than deals like this?
  • Tom Johansmeyer
    I think these guys have a shot. The problem with the adult business right now is that they haven't figured out interesting or unique ways to get people to spend money online. If Adult Friend Finder is any indication, the future of adult entertainment online is going to be pay for services (particularly networking) rather than content. Zivity seems like the intersection of the two.
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  • Hi...I found your site via Yahoo! when i was searching for cover girl models, and this post regarding Zivity, an adult social network, raises $1M before launch really sounds very interesting to me.. Thanks.
  • Steven
    A social network is based on a place where people can meet and spend time interacting online, and while the idea of a gated version that allows for adult content (because by default everyone has verified there age by paying to be there) would bring a lot of people to it (including those that wish to network and promote there other online ventures), the idea of paying to work, and not really being invested in there time there, will keep people away. Your "model" is already out of focus.
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  • I'm a little confused reading the article.

    "It’s not a porn site, such as the newer sites Eroshare (pictures) or Pornotube (vidoes). Rather, it likens itself to a mixture of MySpace and Playboy magazine with popularity/voting features thrown in."

    Why does Zivity say they are not a porn site? But they are like Playboy, a porn company.

    That doesn't make sense. And what's wrong with porn? Why not make a porn company and just be upfront about it?

    Zivity is a porn company. So what.
  • Paul
    Yeah, but why would I want to give money to companies like Zivity for porn when there's so much high quality content available for free. I mean, why shell out dough when I can go to a nice site like http://pornzala.com and find whatever porn videos I want? Vertical search is 2.0 too, right?
  • I think that Playboy is only considered porn because it has been around so long and had to fight every step of the way to nude women in its pages.

    To me Nudity does not equal Porn. WalMart and I differ on the issue though as they stopped selleing even Maxim Magazine for being to racy.

    I think there is room in the "Amateur" fetish for a quality site to generate revenue from subscriptions however I doubt that it will be as much as they expect. More likely their base of income will come from ad revenue related to the free content they give away to non-members.
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  • I’m convinced their licensing model, based on member's votes, will attract some amazing models and photographers.

    Greetz,
    André
  • Crazy how they raised 1 million for a adult social network when nobody has even to this day has ever heard of it.
  • they raised before even launch, they must have won good trust to get fund.
  • PureCompanion.com is another new adult network site. They also use the model of giving some of the profits back. They let you charge for the videos you upload and you take 1/2 the money. You can browse this whole site though without getting the dreaded "Pay Now" screens like zivity and adultfriendfinder
  • Zivity seems like an interesting idea...but doesn't seem to me like it's worth a million...or ever will be.

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  • grumpy man
    this adult social network invested over 2.2 mil before their launch check out http://www.xadultbook.com , a free version of zivity not based on monetization via paid voting it is simply a facebook setting for adults looking for fun, should be interesting to watch zivity and xadultbook battle it out.