Zivity CEO explains her new, less-profitable strategy
Cyan Banister, co-founder of adult photography community site Zivity — a place where photographers and models post cheesecakey photo shoots in hopes of attracting fans — has been wrestling with the site’s slower-than-hoped-for growth rate since Zivity launched in 2007.
Last week, Zivity’s board approved an unusual restructuring: Most of the company’s resources have been split off into Top Fans, based around a celebrity-fandom site Zivity had launched in April as a separate revenue-chasing strategy. Banister… Continue Reading
More job cuts hit Silicon Valley: Zivity and hi5
Even as the startup world watched bubbles popping in other industries over the past year, we hoped it wouldn’t hit us quite as hard. But it looks like we were hoping in vain. During the past week, a number of startups have announced job cuts as they prepare for what will likely be a long recession.
Here are latest two that we’ve heard about. Zivity, an adult-focused social network featuring tasteful photography of female nudes, has… Continue Reading
Come see The Dark Knight a day early
Perhaps you’ve heard of a little film called The Dark Knight. It’s the sequel to Batman Begins and it’s opening this Friday in theaters. As a little treat to our VentureBeat readers we have 20 tickets to give away to a screening of the film the night before it opens, this Thursday, July 17.
The screening is being put on by three startups: Xoopit, Zivity and Powerset. Xoopit makes it easier to find things in your Gmail… Continue Reading
Nudity-friendly site Zivity gets $7 million to compete with MySpace, sort of
Zivity, the start-up featuring semi and fully nude women in different poses, has a simple model: Make a social network similar to Facebook or MySpace, but with two separate user bases — one being subscription-paying members, and the other being models and photographers who post (artistically) nude photo-sets on the site.
Zivity has proven itself something of an anomaly by raising $8 million to date from some well known venture firms. The first million came last… Continue Reading
Mint wins Techcrunch. Latest start-ups: mEgo, Wixi, Xtr3D, Flowplay
This just in: The winner of the Techcrunch40 event is Mint, the personal finance company (see our coverage here).
Meanwhile, below is the last batch of Techcrunch companies, from Tuesday’s afternoon session. After hitting VentureBeat readers with 40 start-ups over the past two days, we’re going to try our best fast on Web 2.0 for at least a day. Frankly, this latest batch wasn’t that impressive. Here’s the ranking: WooMe, Zivity, mEgo, Wixi, Xtr3D, Metaplace, Flowplay,… Continue Reading
Zivity, an adult social network, raises $1M before launch
Zivity, 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… Continue Reading