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EroticBPM: Killshot Opens Up About Zivity, Paypal, Patents, and the Decline of DIY Creativity.

AltPorn — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 13:51:11 +0000

Killshot, altporn O.G. and long time friend of APN, who has been running EroticBPM for nearly a decade, worked with Fatal Beauty, and also launched SpicePlay in 2004, shared his thoughts on the latest heavily funded venture in the altporn user generated content adult membership site category, Zivity. His points on PayPal and the inherent issues of unfair competition raise some real questions. A lot of people, particularly in the DIY adult site community lost a lot of money when PayPal suddenly radically changed it’s rules on adult sales and many of them are still reasonably bitter on the point. We have some questions as well about how models and photographers can get excited to contribute for free to a site that might eventually give them a potential payout based on traffic and popularity they have to generate for themselves by spamming their friends for ‘votes’ when they could easily make more money simply joining the affiliate programs of nearly any other altporn site and promoting just as hard. Killshot also points out some interesting similarities Zivity has with his Spiceplay site, which we miss a lot. It had some great interactive features and some really innovative ways of sharing the wealth with it’s participants.

Killshot of EroticBPM writes:

Lately I have been hearing more and more about Zivity, a new adult site that pretends not to be an adult site. I largely ignored it even after seeing a few mentions by some members here at Ebpm. Then I heard some more details from a friend and started to check into it more.

I signed up for a beta account and got access a couple days later. I looked around a bit and was not really impressed because parts of it as even fleshbot noticed seemed pretty similar to what I did with spiceplay. (Sharing revenue with models based on members giving credits to models or each other.) And they even have a patent pending on that.

Yeah there are some pretty girls, some of them are naked, some of them are not, and there is all the basic social features you can expect to have. But nothing else really notable.

The thing that caught my eye the most was the fact that they take paypal. Most people wouldn’t think twice about that. But talk to anyone in the adult biz and you will probably hear the same story about their account getting banned. Or you may even hear stories about paypal once upon a time courting the business of adult websites (myself included) only to ban them all a few months later when Ebay bought them out.

So why does Zivity get a free pass?
Well, it turns out that Founders Fund and Blue Run Ventures put up the $8 Million in VC funding to get Zivity started. The same people behind paypal and numerous other tech startups. And the people behind Zivity is quite impressive.

Jon Elvekrog – CEO
According to his bio on Zivity, he has worked for HP, TIBCO, Volex, and helped build LinkExchange

Scott Banister – Chairman and Co-Founder
Founder of ListBot which sold to Microsoft
VP of Idealab – sold to AOL
Co-Founder of Ironport – Sold to Cisco for $830 million

Cyan Banister – Co Founder and Editor in Chief
Scott Banister’s wife – Details on her background are lacking
*edit* Cyan was kind enough to link me to her linkedin profile. She was a senior manager at IronPort and has had a successful career in recruiting for bay area startups. */edit*

Jeffrey Wescott – Co Founder
Former Ironport engineer

Jordan Ritter – CTO
Napster Co Founder
Cloudmark CTO
Columbia Music Entertainment CTO

John Manoogian III – Director of User Experience and Product Design
Worked at Organic Inc
Designed Yahoo’s homepage and UI
Claims to have invented social bookmarking

So why is this a big deal to me?

The fact that they can use paypal and no other adult company can is only a minor annoyance.

The fact that they are attempting to patent something that is neither new or innovative is a little more concerning and makes sense coming from an industry that is increasingly patenting anything obvious just for the sake of having a large patent portfolio and then suing people.

Non Obvious innovations that took hard work to develop certainly deserve to be patented for a period of time. Obvious patents only serve to stifle innovation and end up doing far more harm than good.

However, the biggest thing that has me going is why are they doing this? Why would all these people decide to get into the adult business? If the VC investors hope to see their money back. Zivity would likely need to maintain a paid membership of over 100,000 users. I really don’t see them lasting long.

However, if they are successful. I feel that it will be another sad day for all the creative people out there who don’t have access to piles of money but have plenty of amazing ideas.

Part of what makes the internet great is the ability to share ideas, art, and collaborate with other people to create new things. When big companies and big money comes along and lock down ideas with patents and further stifle creativity by throwing so much money at their project that other people do not even get noticed. Well, it makes the internet less diverse, it puts a lot of money in the hands of a few people, and it certainly takes away a lot of the fun.

Maybe I would feel better if Zivity had come along and done something truly different. But I just don’t see it.

Response To QuantCast Ranking Drama

Beeker — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 02:40:24 +0000

I’d like to address incorrect assertions about the recent QuantCast statistical addition to our regular Alexa traffic and site popularity study. “Anony Mouse” has not so boldly anonymously called the data gathered into question, asserting that the Blue Blood statistics were somehow aggregated in some way as to appear as though their overall footprint in this genre is very large. What puzzles me about this accusation is that the statistics are right there for anybody to look up. There was absolutely no aggregation of the data of the rankings in any way and there is nothing hidden from public fact checking.

“Why would you aggregate Blueblood’s sites together and somehow miss the fact that many sites on your list are also part of other companie’s holdings, such as Naughty America, Gods Girls, EroticBPM, etc, etc…” – Anony Mouse

Blue Blood’s overall footprint in this genre is in fact very large, larger than I had previously realized. So, if I had aggregated the statistics and rolled together Blue Blood ranking statistics, their actual QuantCast rank would have been on the very top of the chart, ringing in at precisely 4,465, with an impressive estimated monthly traffic (EMV) result of 379,471. But, that’s not how the study was done. If it had been, Blue Blood would in fact have topped the chart, being sizably more popular that SuicideGirls.com even.

It is also clear that Anony Mouse doesn’t understand what a networked membership site really is, so I think it’s best to explain. A membership in Naughty Flipside actually also automatically gets the member additional access to every site in the Naughty America family of sites, such as Naughty Office, Naughty Bookworms, My Friends Hot Mom, etc. Thus, it is a network membership site. However, Naughty Flipside is the only site that Naughty America does that really truly fits in the AltPorn genre. Some people here at AltPorn.net do enjoy some of the nerdy girl content on Naughty America’s Naughty Bookworms, but it’s not something we’d consider totally in the AltPorn genre. These rankings are done on a site by site basis, for each site being measured, not the overall network.

GodsGirls’ parent company NicheBucks, on the other hand, doesn’t even include GodsGirls in their affiliate program, let alone their network of sites. So, as a member, you would not get any additional membership to AuntJudys.com, OlderWomen.com, BigOlderWomen.com, OfficeGals.com, Twinks.com, or even FullBush.com. So, even if we were measuring the traffic and popularity of networked membership sites, instead of the individual sites we actually are measuring, counting the overall NicheBucks site portfolio wouldn’t make any sense.

Business wise, EroticBPM, formerly RaverPorn could be considered to be connected to the Spiceplay site, which was also in our study until it went on hiatus, as well as FatalBeauty for that matter, but they too are not networked as far as membership goes. This still does mean that Killshot could be considered to have a decently large footprint within this genre though.

Although they are still counted and measured individually, Blue Blood does actually network the memberships for each of their sites listed in this AltPorn multi-girl site study. The statistics were not aggregated in any way, but a membership in any one of their sites on that chart, such as Blue Blood or BarelyEvil automatically grants access to all their other sites on the chart, such as RubberDollies and GothicSluts. The four sites they have on that chart don’t even comprise all their alt-site properties, but all their sites are in this genre. I just happened to mention in my last post that Blue Blood seemed to be pretty big, and really, they clearly are. Nothing was skewed or spun or aggregated or fudged at all.

Altporn ‘A’ List Alexa: June 1, 2007

Beeker — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 16:00:31 +0000

Just under the wire, here is this month’s Altporn ‘A’ List Alexa chart. Of note this month, DeviantNation continues it’s rise up the charts, slipping past CrazyBabe. EroticBPM is up a few spots. CityKittie is looking pretty dead and SpicePlay is still closed up under redesign.

AltPorn: AltPorn Genre History Timeline

Beeker — Tue, 15 May 2007 20:42:35 +0000

Here is the AltPorn History Timeline. AltPorn.net has isolated the domain registration dates as the logical earliest starting point for sites, as well as the Archive.org records as the latest third party documented historical record, in order to best establish a range within which sites could have logically launched. Then we contacted site owners and operators to nail down official dates within that range. This is the most complete and most accurate AltPorn genre historical timeline available and we hope you find it as interesting and even entertaining as we do.

* Archive.org info for paid membership sites reflects the first available record of the existance of the join page and/or actual members area navigation. This reflects a sites actual ability to serve memberships to the public.

** In cases of no reply from site staff, owners, or operators, the launch date refelects the earliest record of a join page and/or actual members area navigation on Archive.org

Spiceplay: Bee Making Crumbs in the Bed

Truant — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 15:00:00 +0000

SpicePlay has always been an interesting experiment. It has one of the most unique structures in the Alt site arena. It has it’s own sort of economy, where members get credits and use them to view just what they like and the people in the pictures get paid based on sort of how much their sets made in credit sales. They also have a very interesting flash based image series viewer and all sorts of unique community interaction features.

Spiceplay writes:

Bee Bee Bee!
This set was shot so long ago, not only does it feel like forever, but it actually is forever. Neat eh?
Anyways.. Forever is gone and Bee is here! And on a bed! and…. nekkid!

Thanks to Garnet for shooting the set

Altporn ‘A’ List Alexa Rankings

Beeker — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 14:30:39 +0000

On the whole, there are some really cool and interesting sites in the altporn genre and I think we’d all agree that there is also a great deal of hype swirling around it as well these days. So, Altporn.net is allowing me to embark on a series of articles regarding actual hard statistics, in an effort to make things a bit more clear to the people interested in having a better understanding of the reality.

This chart of Alexa ranking measurements for the top sites in the genre is designed to illustrate the relative popularity of the various core altporn membership driven sites. Alexa ranking, although not perfect, is one of the best available measures of site popularity across the entire internet. Alexa is not always precise, but it’s a pretty good ballpark measure. It’s a little tricky for those unfamilliar with it’s structure, but the explaination is really pretty easy to understand. Every site on the internet is essentially ranked in order from very most visited to very least visited, and the numbers start at one for most visited. Thus, the number one most visited site on the internet according to Alexa has an Alexa rank of 1. Currently Yahoo has an Alexa rank of 1, Microsoft MSN has a rank of 2, Google has a rank of 3, MySpace has a rank of 5, YouTube has a rank of 7… you probably get the picture.

So, without further more complicated discussion of Alexa data collection, here are the actual traffic rankings, or relative popularity, of the core sites in the genre.

If there are sites that you, as readers, feel should have been included, or should not have been included, in this altporn membership site ranking chart, let us know your suggestions.

Spiceplay: Maya Chillaxes To Some Tunes

Melisande — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 04:00:00 +0000

I believe the cheesy pickup line “Hey baby, nice cans!” is appropriate to use at this juncture.

Spiceplay writes:

Have you ever wondered how beautiful women listen to music? Well it is EXACTLY like this. And no one had better try to convince me it isn’t. Also, I love Maya‘s kitty.

Spiceplay: glitterhips: Pink & Black and Cute All Over

EdRoth — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 18:10:57 +0000

You know what? I love Glitterhips. You know what else? I think she is gorgeous. I think she is an incredibly, incredibly attractive person. *smooch* The only thing I am worried about? Gettin’ a boner!

Spiceplay writes:

Broken cameras, delayed flights, traffic jams, one way streets and rain. At every turn evil forces were trying to prevent this shoot from happening, but we prevailed and today the long awaited photos of Glitterhips are here!

Spiceplay: Maya: New ink

EdRoth — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 17:00:31 +0000

Fleshbot recently did their Top 10 Hotties of 2005 (including our friend Victoria Lane), but I think they forgot someone. Maya Lofgren is not only the prettiest Swede in altporn, but one of a handful of models who are truly special. She’s on my top 10 list every year. 8)

Spiceplay writes:

The prettiest swede in altporn has returned to spiceplay sporting some new ink since we last saw her. More Maya photos are always a good thing.

Spiceplay: face: Closet

EdRoth — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 17:00:00 +0000

Face is turning into one of my fav models. She’s just terribly cute, and I love her black slip, fishnets, and pearls. Gorgeous, gorgeous girl.

Spiceplay writes:

I would love to look in my closet one day and see Face there.

Photography by Ashley Arias

A podcast interview with Scott Owens

EdRoth — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 16:05:19 +0000

For our first podcast, I did an interview with Scott Owens, owner of Spiceplay and eroticBPM and part owner/siteop of FatalBeauty. Scott talks about how he got started back in 1999, how things have changed since then, and offers advice for budding site ops and models.

Altporn.net Podcast for 2005-11-13: Interview with Scott Owens

Try to ignore how stupid I sound.

Update: if you want to just subscribe to our podcasts, use these links:

– RSS2 Feed
– ATOM Feed

Spiceplay: charissa: Get Dressed

EdRoth — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 12:00:00 +0000

Spiceplay writes:

Like most people, I think seeing someone take off their clothes is pretty exciting. But there is just something about a cute girl putting on her make up and getting dressed. I like it

Spiceplay: Bid on Misty’s iPod Nano

EdRoth — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 16:46:37 +0000

Girls and technology are like chocolate and peanut butter — put them together, and I get a massive erection. So obviously I’m gonna be interested in getting ahold of the sleek and sexy iPod Nano that’s been all over the sleek and sexy Misty.

Spiceplay writes:

A year ago when the Ipod mini was the new hotness, Misty did a shoot with it. Now that the new iPod nano is out we just had to bring back our iPod girl for another shoot. Bid now and it can be yours!

Spiceplay: Misty goes to Vegas, defiles iPod Nano

EdRoth — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 21:00:00 +0000

Spiceplay writes:

Misty and I met up in Vegas for a trashy hotel shoot. She plays around with a bottle of champagne while listening to a sexy iPod nano. (watch for it to go on auction soon!)

Spiceplay: Face – Eggs

EdRoth — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 12:00:00 +0000

Spiceplay writes:

I was surprised to find out that Face has an amazing talent for cooking eggs AND taking off her clothes at the same time.

Mmmm I bet those are some tasty eggs.

Photography by Ashley Arias

She has big boobies.

I said “boobies.”

Original link: http://www.spiceplay.com/player/face/3341/

Spiceplay: Amanda_L: Shaving

EdRoth — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 16:20:00 +0000

Amanda returns to Spiceplay, and it looks like she’s sporting some great new tattoo work.

We know from a previous shoot that Amanda is a rather flexible girl:

Original link: http://www.spiceplay.com/player/Amanda_L/3284/