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.
Reminds me of suicidegirls.com…
God bless America. Isn’t this a great country!
Reminds me of the saying:
“Where there’s a buck to be made, theree’s a VC to be …. found”
haha
To me the best site out there is Megarotic.com
According to the Alexa link below they are now the worlds biggest adult site in terms of ranking and pageviews:
http://www.alex...w.megarotic.com
Megarotic is ranked 26 of all sites in the USA today.
I wonder if a site like this can ever be sold or do an IPO?!
This is king of new site on the like youtube porn site but it looks pretty good also
http://www.netosex.com
it is nsfw do dont open if u are under 18
Content isn’t unique and the girl isn’t even half-attractive. Also, if this is considered porn, the the stuff you find everyday on people’s Myspace is much more scandalous.
So, $10 gets you 5 votes (=$2 per vote), and each vote gives out $0.8 to models+photographers : where does $1.2 per vote go to? Well, the 60% margin sounds pretty close to a rip-off to me!
I hear there is easy money drug trafficing too.
Like Suicide Girls, Zivity is a social network surrounding pictures of attractive women.
—
Um no there are no attractive women on suicide girls.
I like the business model. Monetization is in place from the get go, which is more than you can say for most startups.
Would I pay for the naked version and the privilege to vote? I won’t. But I am pretty sure there is a segment of the population that would.
If they can control any attempt of “gaming” the system by a few causing the majority to not matter, then they have a shot at success in my opinion.
Here I have written about it last week:
http://founders...business-model/
I’m wondering if I could be a model for zivity LOL
Kisses!
Hi. My name is Scott. I started this company called IronGate. Have you heard of it? Oh, no? Well it don’t matter, cause I made a hefty chunk of change and now my new thing is porn. Look, these hipster indie girls who are half my age! They’re not pornstars, they’re liberating FEMINISTS! You get 5 votes so that way you can inflate egos arbitrarily and artificially. And I get laid! With 20 year old hipster indie liberation feminists! America… FUCK YEAH!
http://www.playpal.eu — I was thinking about a kids site for that domain, but if the PayPal guys are investing in porn we might as well go that route too, no?
You have stop delievering porns on TC. There are christians, catholics, and some religious groups. They many find it offensive. They also believe theirs curse on adultry sex.
Africa was on example. Spreading AIDS, HIV, Malaria, etc. There’s no such thing is cure. How hard is produce these medicine? Very, very hard. It’s gross when you see shadow diseases.
Do I believe in God? I’m not sure If I would say yes. I don’t know. I think it’s best for people not the cross the line and commit adultry sex.
Just don’t spread diseases to people….
To comment 15:
Spreading diseases with online porn? Thats new!
For everything else there is CONDOMS!
Do you believe in God? Who cares?
I saw SICKO.
Cool….American Insurance Company can make huge money!!!
Spreading disease & adultry sex. Well Good luck.
I like to work insurance company and fucking collect huge money and taxes on Porn industry & porn stars. I like it. It’s fun….
Again, that girl in the sample photo is WHACK!
Seriously, do you think this is the first porn site designed by silicon valley alumni?
If they’re using flash for the images instead of jpegs, they’ve already failed.
I reposted this article with some commentary. You can join in at
http://www.opra...3245#post793245
Bix did much the same thing before Yahoo bought em.
I think the team behind this is having a midlife crisis, guys go back to your day jobs, your mothers are not happy!
Spiceplay had a similar model a while ago. Users purchased credits which they could then spend to access model photographs. a portion of the credits were converted back into USD and paid directly to models. This encouraged models to hang out on the site and be social with users. It worked pretty well for a while.
Additionally, Spiceplay also features shoots with models fondling sexy tech gadgets, and the gadgets were then auctioned off for credits.
Search for it on fleshbot and/or gizmodo for more info.
(I was the developed and co-idea-person behind the site. Feel free to get in touch for more info.)
This is unfortunate — companies involved in an area of business simply to turn a quick buck. Nope, I am not being naive, but there used to be such a word called integrity.
Maybe some of the “new media” folks will discover that licentiousness is not a victimless crime.
LAME, i can get “art-rotica” for free on ten different sites
you’re telling me for $10 she’ll take her clothes off? is this 1950?
Interesting they chose a non-porn/sex related domain name.
@companies involved in an area of business simply to turn a quick buck
HA HA HA HA! Porn is one of the most competitive industries on the internet. It’s extremely difficult to make money in net porn without either investing a crapload of money (most of it on marketing) or being a hot wife/gf/model who develops a following. And she definitely won’t get rich at it, just, as Seska said at South by Southwest, have a middle class lifestyle with a middle class income.
Competative yes. But as with any business those that work hard can succeed without a large investment in marketing.
Seska is a good example a person that works hard as well as being a hot wife.
Did you need a password?
Well, Slow buckk, I’d have to guess that you’ve never actually tried making money in Internet porn, either that or you failed and assume that means that it’s tough for everyone. The truth is that porn is one of the easiest ways to make money on the Internet.
i am an erotic director and model very intersted in this new twist of sites you have arranged …would like to chat about being a model and providing some good content
Hey, I know that girl!
It’s not porn! Just pin-up gone wild! Go Zivity!!!!
I know TC has made these kinds of posts before, but I believe there are minors who read TC, so shouldn’t there be some kind of warning… I know that’s probably going to be useless.
I just don’t think TC should be providing links to adult websites.
As for the adult industry, there are much easier and safer ways to make money, which is why there hasn’t been alot of interest in it from Silicon Valley. There is a greater risk factor with adult websites, not just in terms of money, but also other areas in the person’s life.
I’m wondering who will make up the majority of their hoped-for audience. For the guys (primarily) who want hardcore porn, there are many alternative sites to get their fix. All of the cam girl sites attract guys who want their online version of a 900 call. Will this be any different? FHM + skin?
Considering the vast warehouses of free porn out there, why would anybody pay 10$ to see a naked woman (or man)? I am still surprised porn is such a big deal around the world considering we all have the same parts and spend our entires lives naked anyhow (but hidden under cloths)… speaks volumes to how sexual a species we really are.
Jon
It seems like a more polished version of the site that I’m signed up to.
http://www.rude.com/missblizz
Rude has video though – I dont think zivity does
“Pay to see them nude”
Sounds like porn to me.
Arrington talking about pr0n sites… This site everyday dissapoints me even more…
startup porn! are there porno vcs?
So Silicon Valley well be known as Porn Valley–Pass a law, no company that promotes sex allowed to trade on the stock markets…
“So, $10 gets you 5 votes (=$2 per vote), and each vote gives out $0.8 to models+photographers : where does $1.2 per vote go to? Well, the 60% margin sounds pretty close to a rip-off to me!”
Yeah, those guys should build, host and maintain a nice, semi-free site for no pay at all. Darn their greedy hands.
Um, guess what – lots of adult web content endeavors are Silicon-Valley owned and operated,
Its just that press releases arent generally sent to you about them, to avoid damage to their non-porn brands.
Someone asked for an adult VC? AdultVest.com
this souds good.
“…Pass a law, no company that promotes sex allowed to trade on the stock markets.”
WTF? Dude, it’s not 1940. Sex sells, and right or wrong, there’s too much money to be made exploiting it for the porn industry to go away. You don’t have to agree with it, you don’t have to patronize it, and you certainly don’t have to invest in it – but your desire to legislate your morality onto the rest of us makes you a scary human being. Furthermore, just what does “promotes sex” mean? Beer ads use attractive, scantily clad women ad nauseam – does this mean Anheuser Busch shouldn’t be publicly traded?
I’m seriously thinking to invest in porn after reading all comments. Anybody with new and fresh ideas? LOL
Yes, these industry is a big value in term of cash and money. But there are more than this should the investor look. What about their social responsibilities. Maybe minor can bypass the system to get to see the porn site of it. How do they secure the system?
Anyway, that is my personal comment. You might agree or you might not.
By the way, It’s a big business. There are many investor looking into it. It’s same like the online gambling.
Don’t forget http:/www.sexbyrss.com it’s still a great idea !
Name one big deal that adultvest has done. Hell name ANY deal adultvest has done!
I wonder what is the VC exit strategy on sites like these. IPO looks a bit hard with porn sites.
Josh, you beat me to it! I was going to point out that Spiceplay had already done this.