General Premise

In short – awesome! I wouldn’t have become a beta member, I wouldn’t have been recruiting friends, and I wouldn’t be writing this post if the idea didn’t intrigue me.

Beauty & Freedom

Every woman has an inner model trying to get out. Zivity empowers women to feel their most beautiful and comfortable. With helpful guides on makeup, hair, and photo shoots, Zivity is the place to unleash your inner model. We offer cool social tools to track your fans, tally your votes, share your photos with friends, and even collect royalties.

You Choose the Stars

Zivity’s collection of models from every walk of life is uncensored, advertising-free, and different from online photo sites because you can actually interact with the real models and photographers you’re voting for. Connect with stars, become a top fan, and chat with photographers about upcoming photo shoots with new models.

Vote, Share, Create

Zivity models and photographers enjoy the privilege of a free Zivity membership. Zivity is an exclusive, invite-only community with real models, real photographers, and real votes. These votes convert to real revenue (aka CASH) for models and photographers.

My understanding of the above paragraphs, the Zivity FAQs, and interviews I’ve read with Cyan and others is that Zivity is a combination of a monetized social networking site, a photography community, and a certain amount of editorial control and vision promoting female beauty ultimately bringing the pieces together in a sum greater than the parts. I think this is an excellent premise, and apparently so do the VC backers who’ve funded Zivity to the tune of $7 million.
It is through the lens of this understanding that I evaluate my actual experiences with Zivity, and if I’ve an errant assumption here then it would readily explain any shortcomings mentioned below.

Content

I strongly suspect that this will improve as the number of Zivity members, models, and photographers grows, but I would really like to see more diversity in the Zivity content. This includes but isn’t limited to ethnicity, body type, costume, poses, location, lighting, photographic style, abstractness, and the amount of digital alteration. Also, I’m far from the most liberal guy out there but even I can appreciate the occasional fine photograph of a man, and the photographic possibilities opened up by capturing the muscle and strength of men combined with the fluidity and form of women together are myriad. So why must Zivity be limited to female beauty, rather than human beauty? Keeping the content “clean” is easier to judge if sexes are kept separate, so as a compromise why couldn’t part of my Zivity preferences be whether I wanted to see male photography, female photography, or both? I will concede that featuring both sexes could make Zivity the target of negative attention given the realities of American society, and understand the female-only focus if this is the case.

Social Networking

Not having any information about the Zivity feature roadmap it’s impossible to say what Zivity is leaving out and what they just haven’t gotten to yet. However, the current social networking features of the site are very… basic. Basic profile fields, status updates, messaging, and a rudimentary news feed round it out. Thumbnails in the news feed don’t feature rollover enlargement as thumbnails do elsewhere in the site, and there’s not much content for the news feed beyond new friendships and new votes for photo sets. I realize that a balance needs to be struck between features and keeping Zivity focused, but I really feel the social networking aspect could use a bit more substance. Finally, and this doesn’t apply to just Zivity but is a pet peeve of mine with every social networking site I’m aware of, I wish an incentive could be found to encourage people to only friend individuals they have or are forming a relationship with, rather than the seeming competition for who can have the most.

Photography Community

This is the strongest area of my interest, and thus the one I’m the most opinionated about. One excellent source of content for the news feed would be building community around photography. While I host some of my own photography on Flickr my favorite photo site on the web is actually stodgy old photo.net. This site is fantastic for constantly highlighting new, excellent and diverse photography, and providing a wealth of information and discussion around it making the site a constant source of inspiration. Topics discussed include location, subject matter, cameras, lighting, Photoshop techniques and much more. On the one hand I appreciate a simplistic interface that’s just for viewing photography, but as a photographer there were many Zivity sets where I was dying to know the location or the light equipment used. Might Zivity have multiple “views”, one for just enjoying the photography, but perhaps with an expandable panel showing discussion and data about the shot? Of course the discussion wouldn’t be limited to photography topics, but could also include fashion, posing, or anything else Zivity members, photographers, and models are interested in.

Editorial Control and Vision

The last piece in the Zivity puzzle is the way these elements are brought together. New sets are reviewed to see if they meet the content guidelines, keeping the level of qualify for the site high. I think this is the right way to do it, but I think an opportunity is also being missed. What about the photographers and models that would really like to be on the site, but whose work isn’t accepted? Sure, a Zivity staffer could spend the time giving specific feedback and making suggestions, but I think the community would be even better suited for this. Couldn’t denied sets that still meet a base set of conditions such as no men (for now!) and no sex acts be posted in a “learners” section, where feedback could be given from a wide variety of members with the goal of getting the next submission approved? Votes could even be allowed, giving Zivity members the ability to ask the Zivity editorial staff to reconsider, and seeing this learning process could encourage other people to submit their own photos. Members of the community who are photographers or models and are located in the same region could offer to help in person, if they desired. An interactive “learners” section would give the community the opportunity to interact and grow, just as commenting at the photo level would provide another opportunity.

Commenting at the photo level also brings to mind rating at the photo level. Voting is (mostly – see below) a good idea but it only captures a general preference. Allowing votes or ratings at the photograph level would allow members to highlight the shots that really stand out to them. Also, while I may not be very representative of other members I’m conservative with my votes simply because they cost me money. A two tier rating system would allow me to pick my absolute favorites (vote) but also express a broader range of opinion using free ratings.

Hopefully this more nuanced representation of preference would make the leader board more interesting and useful. As it stands, Pearl (I voted for her, she’s gorgeous!) has been at the top of the leader board since I joined the site, meaning I have to look elsewhere if I want new and interesting content. Perhaps a better alternative would be to maintain an all-time favorite’s leader board reserving a spot at the top for Pearl, and to add a time-limited leader board such as photo.net does. This would give me the ability to log in and see what’s hot right now, and still see fresh content when I do the same thing in a few days.

One item which I don’t feel qualified to discuss is the impact of a site like Zivity on a society with so many gender-inequality and body-image issues. I’ll leave broaching this topic to someone far more knowledgeable than I, other than to say Zivity needs to be careful around this issue, and appears to have been so thus far. These issues are perhaps underlying the comment I received from a female friend of mine whom I tried to invite to the site.

I am going to pass. I don’t like the basic premise of models tallying votes. It makes it a competition between women and a popularity contest. That’s my perspective at least. Thanks though.

Balancing the different aspects of the site such as community versus uncluttered access to the photos has got to be a challenge, and in my unqualified opinion is one that will play a large role in Zivity’s success.

Other

There are many pieces of Zivity I haven’t commented on at all, such as the revenue sharing system they have in place (great idea!) but I’ve covered most of the stuff I wanted to talk about. One feature that I couldn’t find anywhere on the site was an ability to search for photographers and models that are located in my region. A Google Maps mashup of Zivity member locations would be a great tool for building the Zivity community in the real world. Another thing I’d really like to see is Flickr or Strobist style meetups, where Zivity members get together for shoots, learning, and general socializing. Other than facilitating the organizing for these meetups there’s not a whole lot Zivity can do. However, a great way to get the ball rolling would be for Zivity to host the first ever Zivity SF meetup by bringing together models, photographers, and a photogenic location and inviting members of the site. The meetup could provide a variety of information and demonstrations while encouraging everyone to participate and socialize.

Conclusion

Zivity has a great idea going, but currently there’s a bit of a disconnect between the stated goals of what Zivity is trying to achieve and the site itself. I fervently hope (and suspect) that this is because Zivity is a small company just getting started, with really great things to follow. Hopefully someone from Zivity will read this and leave a comment confirming the situation. And if I’m way off base in my assumptions then best of luck to them anyway, based on the information I found on the web about the individuals behind the company they’re a fun, hardworking bunch, and I look forwarding to seeing whatever they accomplish.

The presentation focused on the following topics.

* Best Project Tools
* Best Office Tools
* Best Email
* Best Calendar
* Best Collaboration Suite

As with much of the current Web 2.0 world, many of the apps he recommended were in Beta or even Alpha but all appeared to be capable tools none-the-less. Throughout the discussion I kept looking for solutions I could bring into my own world including my corporate employment, ongoing college education, and personal projects, and while I could see plenty of uses for the last two it was the corporate settings that came up short. None of the tools seemed to have support for the centralized administration and control that is common in my organization and while workarounds are possible they would require a lot of manual intervention.

This raises the possibility that it isn’t the tool that is broken but rather the way my office works that is ineffective, however the effort and time required to convince and then train hundreds of people in a new way of working would be so extensive as to rule that possibility out, requiring that the tool integrate with the way we already work for better or worse. I say this as my employer rolls out Sharepoint across the organization which is a new way of working and collaborating that will require extensive training, so perhaps I am mistaken? I also wonder if it has to be an all or nothing proposition, might there be a way to use these tools alongside existing corporate apps and get the best out of both worlds? Could a free Basecamp account be used to supplement an existing Sharepoint collaboration site?

The issue that I haven’t seen addressed by either Sharepoint or the Web 2.0 apps here are the interrelated problems knowledge retention and interoperability. What happens when an employee leaves and takes their Basecamp account with them, including project records and notes that may be needed for years to come for reference and billing questions? How can I take the data from one application and move on with it to another application, or even within the same application? For example, what if I have a personal site setup in Sharepoint being used for a small project I’m working on which is then merged into a larger project involving several people with their own Sharepoint site? Is it possible to move a project from one Basecamp account to another? I don’t believe any of the solutions offer an export functionality, other than RSS or iCal. And it doesn’t matter how much you can export from one service if you can’t then import it into another. All applications get replaced over time, and less and less time in our rapidly changing landscape, so it is imperative that the data can outlive the application.

Shortcomings aside, the tools discussed still hold a lot of opportunity for informal and flexible teams if being less attractive to rigid and slower moving corporate teams. I think the current tools are most useful to small entrepreneurial businesses who can now replace an entire corporate IT office with an internet connection and browser, allowing more focus and time to be spent on the product. This is an exciting time with more quality tools available then ever before and I look forward to seeing what the future holds.