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 to roll after their launch last September at TechCrunch40. They’ve raised a total of $8 million now over two rounds of financing and have successfully created a site that combines adult content with social networking. And the mainstream press is beginning to become as fascinated with Zivity as we have been since we first heard about them last August.

Zivity remains invite only and has about 12,000 members, 70 models and 30 photographers. 30,000 people are on the waiting list to get in.

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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 serious attention to them.

The company will announce a new $7 million round of financing in a deal led by both BlueRun Ventures and Founders Fund. The company has now raised a total of $8 million. The social networking experience that these VCs add is substantial. Founders Fund is an early Facebook investor. Both are investors in Slide.

John Malloy of BlueRun Ventures and Luke Nosek of Founders Fund join Zivity co-founders Scott Banister, Cyan Banister (who also models for the site) and Jeffrey Wescott on the company’s board of directors.

The site allows both amateur and professional models and photographers to show their stuff. Users vote on those that they like, which channel real dollars to the talent. The more votes, the more money. The basic site is free, but users must pay to vote. About 40% of gross revenue is given directly to the talent. With a recent redesign, the site is focused much more on social networking - users and talent have profile pages and can add each other as friends. They’ve even added a news feed feature that shows who is adding who as friends, and which models users have voted for.

Zivity remains in private beta (and will likely stay there until early 2009), although current users are given invitations to give to their friends. That means that most people joining the site today already know someone who’s using it, and can add them as a friend. In my “testing” of the site I noticed that the current users seem active in voting and friending. My guess is that building the community slowly but focusing on active users is a good way to go. And besides, anyone that really wants in can get an invitation on InviteShare.

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Zivity, the venture-backed adult content site, which we first covered in August 2007, is starting to get mainstream press attention - co-founder Scott Bannister appeared on the Fox Business Channel late last year, andForbes 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, they are giving away a bunch of accounts to TechCrunch readers - just be one of the first 1,000 people to email techcrunch@zivity.com and you’re in.

Zivity will also be giving invitations to users to give to friends shortly, so we’ve added them to InviteShare. If you don’t get an account via the email above, add yourself there and someone will invite you as soon as the feature is turned on.

Zivity launched at TechCrunch40 last Fall, and co-founder Cyan Banister is becoming somewhat famous since she isn’t just an employee - she also models for the site.

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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, they are giving away a bunch of accounts to TechCrunch readers - just be one of the first 1,000 people to email techcrunch@zivity.com and you’re in.

Zivity will also be giving invitations to users to give to friends shortly, so we’ve added them to InviteShare. If you don’t get an account via the email above, add yourself there and someone will invite you as soon as the feature is turned on.

Zivity launched at TechCrunch40 last Fall, and co-founder Cyan Banister is becoming somewhat famous since she isn’t just an employee - she also models for the site.

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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 (censored) image above.

Shocking? Somewhat. But as I said before, at least she’s eating her own dog food by modeling for the site. She doesn’t just do this to promote the site, though. It’s also a form of self expression. In an email she says “I don’t take my clothes off just to promote Zivity. I also do it for the model community and for myself. I want to change how people view nudity and beauty in the same way major television shows opened our minds about other issues…I really enjoy being on Zivity and being nude and sexy in photographs is enjoyable! I look at my photos and I smile. That’s my body. I can do what I want with it. It is beautiful. Nobody can take that away from me.”

“I started Zivity because I believe in empowerment business models that enable people to be entrepreneurial,” she added.

Whatever the reasons, people like her pictures. She’s currently no. 8 on the list of top models. Banister is also doing other photo sets that are being added to Flickr. See the NOT SAFE FOR WORK images here and here as examples.

Zivity has a unique business model that pays models and photographers directly based on the number of user votes they receive. The more votes, the higher they go on the leaderboard and the more money they make. About 40% of gross revenue is given directly to the talent. They first launched at the TechCrunch40 Conference last Fall. The company raised $1 million in seed funding in August 2007.

Zivity is still in private beta and slowly adding the 20,000 or so people on the waiting list.

Zivity

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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 chairs.

But that isn’t the end of the controversy. The site, which we first covered in August, allows models to upload photos to the site and gain followers. As people vote for models, real dollars flow to the model and photographers who were involved in the shoot. And one of those models is co-founder Cyan Bannister. She’s uploaded one set of photos for the beta period, without nudity. Next week, she says she’ll add another set that includes topless photos, and may go completely nude in the future.

Bannister says that a few years ago she would not have even considered taking her clothes off for a camera. But she isn’t new to getting attention for her looks. In 2000, when she was just 22, she won the “Sexiest Geek Alive” award. When starting Zivity, though, she knew she had to, as she puts it, “eat her own dog food.” For most founders that just means actually using their own product. But for Cyan, it also means taking off her clothes and modeling for Zivity.

So how popular is she with users? The beta has just 500 users so far. Cyan has gathered 25 votes, putting her on the leaderboard of the most popular models. But she’s still well behind the no. 1 model, “Pearl,” who has 117 votes.

Expect more news on Zivity in the next several weeks. They are expanding their beta users (this will be a popular one for our readers), and will soon let in more of the 20,000 people who have signed up to get a look at the site.

Lots of founders say they’re willing to eat their own dog food to support their startup. But how many will shed their clothes?

Zivity was also one of the 100 startups nominated for the Crunchies Startup Awards in January.

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We’re live blogging each session, adding to the summary of each company direct from the floor of TechCrunch 40. Click Refresh to view.

FlowPlay

FlowPlay is a virtual world community built around browser-based casual games. Users play casual games as their own created anime-like avatar, earning virtual goods for their character including clothing, refrigerators and other virtual store items. The site wants to provide the option to play casual games or interact with people in the virtual world (or both).

Animation virtual world product, anime style 2.5D visuals

strong privacy features to protect the kiddies

similar to Hobbo Hotel, Cyworld, Club Penguin, but with casual games emphasis.

Pitched a girls…well it appears to be, you can win dresses and stuff.

Unfortunately the time was used to show a demo video, not the best use of their time on stage. Will appeal to kids.

Metaplace

Areae’s Metaplace platform aims to revolutionize the virtual worlds space with a platform that will provide an open, easy-to-use interface which will allow users to create virtual worlds that can run anywhere. Metaplace-created virtual worlds will allow user to play games, socialize, create content and conduct commerce. Metaplace-created virtual worlds can be embedded into external sites, including Facebook, MySpace or a blog. Virtual worlds in the Metaplace network can be easily linked together.

Virtual world product, market still growing.

Virtual worlds are like AOL in 94, walled gardens etc, not a good thing according to them.

Has Facebook, MySpace widget, blog widgets, 30k embed.

Generic virtual world platform, can have Sim’s style games, shooters, even an Amazon store front.

Virtual world can also import XML: content, services etc can be imported.

Users can set up their own world from scratch, each world communicates with each other.

“virtual worlds for everyone”

Woome

WooMe brings speed dating online and extends it to let users meet new people live in speed sessions that are “fast, fun and free.” WooMe doesn’t require long forms or lengthy profile descriptions, users simply find a session that interests them and meet five people in five minutes. Users can also create their own session based on their interests and can invite people they want to get a know or friends.

Speed dating product.

Good presentation, talk to people quickly via webcam, both parties must agree to hookup

Zivity

Zivity offers a social networking platform focused on “sexy models and beautiful photography.” With a $10 subscription, members receive five votes that they can cast for models and photography they find appealing, with 80c out of every $1 vote cast being distributed to the model and photographer. There is no limit on the amount of money that a photographer or model can make; as long as a photo remains popular, models and photographers will share in ongoing royalties whilst retaining full ownership of the pictures.

Lots of warnings prior to this demo about it including porn…so far all we have is clothed model…false advertising perhaps?

User gen content makers aren’t making money, Zivity wants to change this…well at least for “sexy pics.”

Demo has PG rating…seriously, complete with the PG on the screen.

Ahhh…breasts. PG obviously different in the US to Australia

Kaltura

Kaltura is a collaborative Media startup that allows groups of users to do with video, audio, and animation what wiki platforms enable them to do with text. Think of it as YouTube meets Wikipedia. See our full post here.

Expert Panel: Caterina Fake likes Woome, Sarah Lacey hates it, says it’s not a stand alone company. Loic like Woome as well + likes Metaplace, says its trying to Second Life Facebook. Brad Garlinghouse likes the peoples choice Kaltura, hates Metaplace, says that the train has already left the platform, we already have Second Life.

Hammer likes Kaltura because he likes video, the creativity aspect is taking off.

Discussion about Zivity, Michael turns prudish and says there was too much nudity in the presentation. Sarah Lacey said the nudity was great and it was her favorite. Hammer thinks 16 year old girls will end up on the service, with a word demonstration..lots of laughter. Zivity says they are bound by laws about id, over 18 Hammer says haven’t they heard of fake id’s, gets a round of applause.  Loic suggests there should be a merged service between Zivity and Woome.

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