Playboy Cyber Club
The Playboy Cyber Club was a subscription-based premium service portion of Playboy Online (Playboy.com) that served as an online complement to Playboy magazine. It debuted in 1995 as part of Playboy Online. It had several features that were similar to the print edition of the magazine, but also produced a large amount of original content such as archived photoshoots, videos and live chats. In addition, the site provided interactive features, including member votes to select featured models. It accepted amateur photos for publication and also featured cell phone photos called "Sex Cells" which were taken by the Playboy models themselves.
Cyber Club features
- Cyber Girls - The models appearing in the featured pictorials were called Playboy Cyber Girls since Stephanie Heinrich was spotlighted in August 2000. There were corporate selections of Cyber Girl of the Week and membership elections of Cyber Girl of the Month and Cyber Girl of the Year. A Cyber Girl of the Week model who also won the monthly award was featured as Cyber Girl of the Month 4 months after her weekly pictorial (i.e. if she was a Cyber Girl of the Week in August and won the monthly award, she would be Cyber Girl of the Month for December).
- Playmate Exclusives - Usually before the new print edition of Playboy was available, a "preview pictorial" of the upcoming Playmate of the Month was posted on the Cyber Club. Additional exclusive pictures of current Playmates and previously unreleased photos of past Playmates were also posted.
- Playboy Coeds - Playboy's Coed of the Week began as Coed of the Month from June 2001 to August 2004. Coed of the Week began the following month. In March 2006, Coed of the Month voting among Coeds of the Week began. The Coed of the Month is similar to the process for Cyber Girl except the Coed of the Month is always features 2 months after her weekly pictorial.
- Sexy Girls Next Door (also known as SGND) - This was one of the Cyber Club's oldest features, starting in 1998. A new amateur model proclaimed "The Sexy Girl Next Door" was given a monthly pictorial on the site.
- Special Editions Xtreme - S.E.X. was a more explicit pictorial.
- Employee of the Month (also EOTM and Cheerleader of the Month) - A pictorial that featured an (usually) amateur model with an interesting line of work, such as zookeeper, interior designer, or cheerleader debuted in October 2004. Professional cheerleaders (specifically from the NFL) have been featured, but could not pose nude due to their contracts. From October 2005 to February 2006 this feature was also known as Cheerleader of the Month.
- International Beauties - Playboy spotlighted one of their international models in a monthly pictorial.
- Rookie Babe - This feature, in association with RookieBabe (a nude amateur modelling company), showcased some of their models on the Cyber Club.
- Daily Double - The Daily Double feature began in 1998 and featured daily posting of two never-before-seen pictures of models who had posed for one of the company's numerous publications.
- Celebrities - This was a section devoted entirely to celebrities who had posed for Playboy in the Cyber Club. They were divided into the following categories: Actresses, Women of... (such as Women of Australia or Women of Starbucks), Supermodels, In the News, Athletes, Celebrity Photographers (celebrity photographer photographs of Playmates or Playboy Special Edition models) and so on.
- SuicideGirls - Pictorials of select girls from the SuicideGirls website were made available since Playboy partnered with them.
Closure
Playboy Cyber Club closed on October 18, 2014, and the subdomain cyber.playboy.com was shut down. Some of the site's content was transferred to the Playboy Plus premium site, but some features were never moved.[1]