DEMO: Zerista hopes its mobile community tools will end-run the pack

Zerista is one of 65 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Spring 2010 event taking place this week. These companies do pay a fee to present, but our coverage of them remains objective.

[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":170067,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"business,mobile,","session":"C"}']

Zerista, a provider of mobile web apps for small social groups, brings together elements of custom community platforms like Ning, friend-finding like Foursquare, and event management and ticketing like Eventbrite.

“Existing social media platforms and communities are trying to retrofit their desktop applications for mobile use,” Charlie Savage, CEO of Zerista, wrote in a prepared statement for the press. “Zerista is the first community platform designed from the ground up for the mobile web.”

Zerista plans to offer sites freely to communities up to 250 members, through ad-supported pages. Larger organizations seeking to host sites for events, associations or enterprises will pay a fee. And of course, Zerista hopes there’ll be a lot of ticket purchasing and sales of virtual and physical goods through its system, for which the company will take a cut. (For example, a soccer club might use Zerista’s e-commerce tools to sell uniforms.)

Kickstart Seed Fund has provided less than $1 million in funding. (Zerista did not disclose the precise sum.)

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/980795693