Zivity made several big mistakes:

• No hardcore: Zivity clung to artistic pretensions, screening pictures for "tastefulness," "respect," and "promoting female beauty." Which is morally commendable, but proved disastrous from a business perspective; free tasteful nude pictures are chock a block on the internet; as even Arianna Huffington knows, people only pay for the fetish stuff.
  
• Suicide Girls: As Fleshbot noted when Zivity launched (NSFW link), amateur-y SuicideGirls.com already had a large online adult community when Zivity entered the fray. Suicide Girls also had a large user base of people interested in amateur, or at least amateur-looking, porn.
  
• It cost money: Really good amateur content has proven it can attract readers; really good professional content can make people pay. Zivity tried to combine amateur content with a $10/month subscription model — before it even had any breakout hits.

One thing you can't blame for Zivity's crumble: Brain-dead, sexually repressed male patriarchy. The site was started by Cyan Banister, a seasoned tech exec and sysadmin — and one of her site's first models (see picture at top). And its early investors included none another than Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley's most prominent gay venture capitalist.

Thiel has said there are "only a handful" of companies "truly innovating" in tech today; perhaps he can show Zivity how to unlock its inhibitions and push the envelope while there's still a little time left for the vastly reduced site.

(Top pic via Fleshbot, NSFW link)

Girald, a corporate lawyer at Skadden Arps turned Fashion Institute of Technology student, had found a tech team, secured seed funding for Moxsie, lined up five designers for an online trunk show, and built the website. But there wasn't money left to pay a model. So she donned the Lucy B lingerie herself. On the site, her head's cropped out, but she provided this photo for Valleywag:

I'm not sure what to make of this online-designer trend. Gilt Groupe, which launched last year, hasn't set the world on fire. And Girald's site? "Love the jewelry, hate the '80s-inspired wrinkled metallic clothing, meh on the rest," was one female friend's insta-review of Moxsie.

I'm mostly interested in the notion that Girald had to step in front of the camera. Sure, Cyan Banister, the founder of Zivity, a softcore, user-created porn site, stripped, but she needed to demonstrate she really used the product. Fashion is a different business; amateur models don't suggest a site that's going to display designers' wares at their best.

If Moxsie is really so low on cash it can't afford models, it doesn't speak well for its prospects of surviving the recession. If it's just a publicity stunt, well, I suppose it worked, at the cost of a little dignity.

What do you think? Is Girald cynical, brave — or a little of both?

Bonus trivia: The other model on the site is Nicole Bulick, a Moxsie contractor who's dating Paul Pelosi, Jr. He's the son of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Mom will be so proud! Here's Bulick:

Zivity has been accused of using female sexuality as a ploy to get attention. A ploy, or a business model, one might ask. Mary Hodder, founder of online video startup Dabble, wrote, "It's not that we object to porn, just to the using (or appearance of using) girl geeks to get back their cred. Even if that's not what's happening from their perspective, the rest of us who would like to *not* be sexualized and objectified in our work lives really find the Zivity association disconcerting."

So maybe it is impossible to separate selling images of female sexuality from the sexist tech scene, but when it comes to the question of objectification, Banister objects. "I don't think the opinion that Zivity demeans anybody is one that's held by the majority," she told Valleywag. "I'm a tech vet, and I used to be very similar — you want to strip your sexuality and just live in your brain, and be a talented, smart individual so you can compete in a male-dominated space. You become sexless — but why can't I be both? Why can't I be beautiful and sexy and be smart?"

And a legitimate executive. Zivity isn't just another porn site aping MySpace, which is precisely why it's threatening. Zivity has a Silicon Valley pedigree, which means for the first time, a company that openly embraces female sexuality is rubbing shoulders with Valley oldtimers and chasing Valley money — $8 million in venture capital so far. When female entrepreneurs feel as if they have to fight for equal time as it is, sharing space with Zivity is tantamount to being asked to sleep with the enemy.

But for women, the enemy in this case isn't porn: It's turning against each other based on what's between our own legs. Is it any woman's fault that tech pundits don't give women a fair shake? "I think there's a lot of resentment for how much coverage we get," said Banister. "But we did place at TechCrunch40, and we're venture funded — and it's not just because I took my top off. The investors and the press aren't that naive."

Nor are we. Banister didn't mention it, but Banister's husband Scott was an early employee at PayPal, and some of the funding came from Peter Thiel, Scott's former boss. Part of Zivity's assumption-challenging reality: The Valley's most prominent gay venture capitalist is helping women make money undressing.

Banister told us that though she offered to bow out of the speaking opportunity, the Bay Area Girl Geeks asked her to stay. Dinner organizer Angie Chang told a San Jose Mercury News blogger:

We invited Cyan to give a 3-5 minute introduction as she was voted Sexiest Geek Alive in 2000 (just like Ellen Spertus of Google won the award in 2001 — Ellen was invited by Google to give the intro talk at the first Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner). Cyan is also the cofounder of a Series A funded technology startup, which I respect greatly as a female tech entrepreneur myself.

That is, if embracing women in tech is really about changing the rules, then all women have to have a seat at the dinner party. Even if you don't approve of what they do for a living.

(Photo via takeitez)

Well, eight months after it first started making headlines we finally managed to score an invite to the Zivity beta site, and now we can tell you: not very much.

After all the hype it's received, we expected ... well, something we hadn't seen before, or at least something pretty special. You know, something slightly more than just an opportunity to set up a profile page and look at some pictures of naked chicks female beauty.

Granted, Zivity has entered the market at more than a bit of disadvantage. With megaporn site (excuse us, modern pinup showcase) SuicideGirls setting a certain standard for adult communities online, it can be pretty hard for any new kid on the block to compete. Still, given that Zivity is clearly aware of SG (Missy Suicide is one of their photographers), you'd think they'd at least try to have a site that's more impressive.

No such luck, though: aside from the photos and their totally original voting system, there's not much there there Does anyone really need yet another website where they can set up yet another profile? Sure, the pictures are pretty hot (if a bit tame) ... but why do you have to have one more profile to keep track of just to look at them?

Sample model page

Sample Photo Set

Photo Upload Page (note: no nudity for nonmodels!)

To be fair, Zivity is in beta, so maybe they have some other features in the works that will be in place before their public launch. If not ... well, we sure hope at least a chunk of that $7 million is winding up in their models' pockets. We hate to see good money going to waste.

· Zivity

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Previously: Zivity's Big Score: Good Money After Bad?, Porn 2.0: Haven't We Been Here Before?, The New Porn.com: When Bad Things Happen To Good Domains

Where are we most stimulated?
At the Web's edge.