Zivity: Silicon Valley Elite Dabble in Adult Content

[gonzo]

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.

[gonzo]

I posted this thread from Techcrunch as I think it is an indicator of where this business may indeed be headed in the very near future.

The 2nd Gold Rush For Porn.

I dont think this concept isnt to far fetched. Examine for instance the fact that this is Scott Bannister's project.

Who?

Why Scott is the cofounder of Ironport which is a company that sells hardware which sends out more spam per machine than you can imagine.

Oh it doesnt stop there either. They also market the CURE for spam on the other side of the fence making them just like our spyware friends of the last few years.

Gets my mind to wondering ...

I read more and more about how mainstream companies are looking to cozy up to the adult biz. Companies like AdultVest who none of us have ever heard of before that are touting these stock deals putting your money to work in porn.

AdultVest . . . name one large deal you've done!

Still, imagine if you will getting into the porn busines without getting your hands dirty.

By INVESTMENT!

I can see some of you lurkers already drooling!

A publicly traded investment pool of a million dollars for what I call JunkPorn companies. The "company founder" could create large free sites by using some of the technology youve seen with torrents and the tube sites.

Then buy up every smidge of shitty traffic and in a heartbeat throttle the alexa rating to the top within 6 months. The "founders" then boast about how this used to take years to accomplish and explain the revenue shortcomings with "adult business takes time to mature."

With that kind of money in action with traffic you could pocket half of it and no one would be wiser. Then start the same cycle over!

By the time anyone figured out it was a JunkPorn company -- you would be a mega millionaire and live aboard.

HOW?

Everyone knows that with that level of traffic you would have some sales. After all traffic drives sales and you could pass off the shorfall with the ..."The Adult Business takes time".

Couple that with investors now have a reason to attend "that porn show in Vegas". They will be highly distracted for years with the circus that accompanies adult shows.

How would it be the second coming?

You revalidate the "brokers" to crawl out from the rocks they have been hiding under. After all these be newbies ripe to be fleeced!

A dawn of a new age for the "traffic broker" -- the "knowledge broker" --- and the "homey hookup" broker. Happy days are here again.

In the end when the investors realize that the traffic being bought was pure shit and would not sustain any growth you have a bomb-- not dot bomb but Porn Bomb.

Something to think about.

I know I am.

As always Oprano will be the line drawn against the "darkness".
To rebuke all false claims and expose the second generation of scammers.

[Hammer]

I've always contended that the spyware and spam removal tools were developed by spammers so they can profit both coming and going.

[gonzo]

Originally Posted by Hammer

I've always contended that the spyware and spam removal tools were developed by spammers so they can profit both coming and going.

Jimmy Pearson always used to say that John McAfee developed viruses so he could cure them. How else did he have a patch to fix them so fast?

[miz_wright]

Originally Posted by gonzo

I posted this thread from Techcrunch as I think it is an indicator of where this business may indeed be headed in the very near future.

The 2nd Gold Rush For Porn.

I dont think this concept isnt to far fetched. Examine for instance the fact that this is Scott Bannister's project.

Who?

Why Scott is the cofounder of Ironport which is a company that sells hardware which sends out more spam per machine than you can imagine.

Oh it doesnt stop there either. They also market the CURE for spam on the other side of the fence making them just like our spyware friends of the last few years.

Gets my mind to wondering ...

I read more and more about how mainstream companies are looking to cozy up to the adult biz. Companies like AdultVest who none of us have ever heard of before that are touting these stock deals putting your money to work in porn.

AdultVest . . . name one large deal you've done!

Still, imagine if you will getting into the porn busines without getting your hands dirty.

By INVESTMENT!

I can see some of you lurkers already drooling!

A publicly traded investment pool of a million dollars for what I call JunkPorn companies. The "company founder" could create large free sites by using some of the technology youve seen with torrents and the tube sites.

Then buy up every smidge of shitty traffic and in a heartbeat throttle the alexa rating to the top within 6 months. The "founders" then boast about how this used to take years to accomplish and explain the revenue shortcomings with "adult business takes time to mature."

With that kind of money in action with traffic you could pocket half of it and no one would be wiser. Then start the same cycle over!

By the time anyone figured out it was a JunkPorn company -- you would be a mega millionaire and live aboard.

HOW?

Everyone knows that with that level of traffic you would have some sales. After all traffic drives sales and you could pass off the shorfall with the ..."The Adult Business takes time".

Couple that with investors now have a reason to attend "that porn show in Vegas". They will be highly distracted for years with the circus that accompanies adult shows.

How would it be the second coming?

You revalidate the "brokers" to crawl out from the rocks they have been hiding under. After all these be newbies ripe to be fleeced!

A dawn of a new age for the "traffic broker" -- the "knowledge broker" --- and the "homey hookup" broker. Happy days are here again.

In the end when the investors realize that the traffic being bought was pure shit and would not sustain any growth you have a bomb-- not dot bomb but Porn Bomb.

Something to think about.

I know I am.

As always Oprano will be the line drawn against the "darkness".
To rebuke all false claims and expose the second generation of scammers.

You know, from a statistical standpoint, I've always been curious about the standoffishness of the investment community with regard to adult. It occurs to me that if the financial world is willing to repackage and sell mortgages and credit ratings, financing porn and repackaging into a vehicle makes sense.

I mean, it would have to be a better hedge than, say, the sub-prime market (which: whats' that, Wall Street? My bad - it's egg).

[gonzo]

Originally Posted by LizAEBN

You know, from a statistical standpoint, I've always been curious about the standoffishness of the investment community with regard to adult. It occurs to me that if the financial world is willing to repackage and sell mortgages and credit ratings, financing porn and repackaging into a vehicle makes sense.

I mean, it would have to be a better hedge than, say, the sub-prime market (which: whats' that, Wall Street? My bad - it's egg).

HEDGEFUND!!!

[miz_wright]

Originally Posted by gonzo

HEDGEFUND!!!

Well, sure, you could just say that.

But I really am curious about why there hasn't been anything other than Private Media Group trying to exploit the market as an investment tool to assist in portfolio diversification. Not only would be a great way to legitimise the industry, but think how much fun the average investor could have with a portfolio of porn, liquor, gambling, and birth control (all of which are readily available on NASDAQ/ NYSE/ AmEX).

[gonzo]

Originally Posted by LizAEBN

Well, sure, you could just say that.

But I really am curious about why there hasn't been anything other than Private Media Group trying to exploit the market as an investment tool to assist in portfolio diversification. Not only would be a great way to legitimise the industry, but think how much fun the average investor could have with a portfolio of porn, liquor, gambling, and birth control (all of which are readily available on NASDAQ/ NYSE/ AmEX).

I do have a nice chunk of Playboy in my portfolio. Is still sore from the reaming it took from the aforementioned dot bomb.

[gonzo]

follow up

Zivity is demoing its service today at the TechCrunch 40 event. It's a photo gallery of hot women, both clothed and not, and with a twist: Users who pay $10 a month for access to the nudie pix also get five votes a month, which they can parcel out to models they see on the site. Each vote is worth actual cash money to the models and their photographers.


She can be yours for $10 a month



By default, 60 cents goes to the model and 20 cents to the photographer who took it. Established photogs on the site can strike their own deals with models.

CEO Cyan Banister called Zivity a cross between Playboy (obvious), American Idol (the voting system), and MySpace. The last because there's a social angle to the site: Users will be able to interact with the models. The models, presumably, will take to the interaction in order to boost their popularity and earn more bucks.

Banister thinks that top-performing models will be able to earn more from Zivity than from a typical online model shoot (a few hundred bucks) and possibly even more than a Playboy centerfold model earns ($25,000, she says, plus $100,000 for Playmate of the Year). That's a lot of votes for a site that's got to walk the line between tasteful (but not so tasteful it's boring) and exciting (but not too: There will be no sex in the pictures). An initial reaction to this business plan is to scoff: Who's going to pay for straightforward girlie pictures? However, we should not underestimate the perennial power of adult content to generate revenue. There are lots of ways to make money in this business.

What I find most interesting about Zivity is that it's one of the few new adult business models that's not actually breaking new ground--not technologically, socially, nor from a business perspective. Although the idea of rewarding nude models directly for their popularity may not have been done online so far, it's not a new idea in the broader perspective: Social and participatory sites (like Digg) have shown us how powerful the crowd of users can be when it comes to sorting content, and how much value accrues to the winners of these contests. I'm only surprised that the concept originated for G-rated content before moving to the adult world, instead of vice versa.
The site is still in closed beta. And no, I don't have invites.

[MRock]

Kick ass! Thanx for the info Gonzo! I forsee many more content creator profit sharing sites in the future ... Bring 'em on is what I say!