the (un)official launch
Well, it seems the cat’s out of the bag. We’ve been putting together this site for a few months now and I guess it’s just about ready for the prime time (or as just about ready as it will ever be). Part of the point of House of Naked is to continually refine and iterate, so I can’t imagine it will ever actually be done.
With that said, we’re pretty happy with what we’ve got at the moment and think it’s worth doing a bit of explaining. You see, this site is a bit of an experiment in transparency. The aggregator (on the right side of the homepage) is actually pulling in links from across the web (blogs, del.icio.us, twitter and flickr). The basic idea is that the people who work here already do lots of blogging elsewhere. They post pictures and save links on other sites, so why not use that for our own site? This does two things I think, one it allows people to add content to the site without thinking about it and two, it gives this site some real personality. For the most part these are not run through some ‘Naked filter’, it’s just us being us.
It’s always struck me as slightly odd that companies try to make group blogs that have a single, ‘corporate’, voice. A large part of what makes a business run is the people who are part of it and those people don’t all have the same personality (at least I hope not). Anyway, what I hope this will become is a place for people to bring their own thoughts, ideas and insights. To be honest, it’s probably most interesting for us, but that’s cool. If all this site turns out to be is a great tool for Naked, then we’ve accomplished something.
Anyway, that’s enough from me. Welcome to the site. Feel free to poke around. If you find anything broken, please let us know. Thanks for coming by.
Oh, and big ups to Joe, Fangohr and Uncommon Projects for making this happen.
Noah, please can we have a single, corporate voice on our blog? Perhaps some kind of “Naked Filter” to prevent people bringing their own thoughts, ideas and insights? I mean, the LAST thing we want is acknowledgment that what makes a business run is the people who are part of it and that those people don’t all have the same personality, isn’t it? Surely???
Congratulations! I love HouseofNaked. Definitely, i will keep reading this blog
[…] officially launched. Read more about the AdWeek article in a quick post I wrote, and more from Noah here on the Naked site and here on his own site about the launch of the site itself and what makes the site a bit […]
Great idea Noah, this should really show off how smart/crazy all of you naked people are…
Thanks Michael, hope we can live up to it.
congrats. i was going to post some shenanigans until i saw that’s not allowed. hmph.
thanks craig . . . and for the record, moderate shenanigans are permitted.
its just “those kind of shenanigans” that are the problem. we fully participate and support the participation in the universe of shenanigans not implied by the rules of this blog.
also i am not sure what i did to be included in the “making this happen” section of the post. my role was to keep noah company on the cab rides to DUMBO to meet with the designers. and that i didnt even do that well.
Great idea. Of course, I did it first ; )
Our aggregator is called “he brain that ate Emakina”.
http://blog.emakina.com/2006/10/02/the-brain-that-ate-emakina/
But we stopped advertising the URL because too much x-rated material kept popping up.
Hi Noah
As a fan of your own blog I’m delighted to see Naked have one now. Very clean design (shade of red is just right) and I love Nakeds website. The aggregator idea is very good as it does bring a sense of serendipity to the blog.
Good luck and I’ll wander in now and again.
Liz
sweet idea! And i like the category: experiment in transparency…
a suggestion: mention how many people you have there at Naked NY so us blog readers know the number of people posting and Not-posting. maybe this would encourage those who are not consistently adding great material to do so; while at the same time, letting the readers applaud and become fans of the ones who naturally do. just an idea.
i always think of a blog as an online collage. i’m super excited to see how a group one will take shape. go team Naked!
nevermind, i just went to your people page. ;p awesome!
Completely agree with the desire to let the collective voice have many octaves (wasn’t that poetic), but I wonder about how it’ll work. Seems like Johanna already has quite an influence on content as well as a few others, while the quieter folk might just sink into the shadows. Do you have any spoken or unspoken agreement on contribution (quantity or quality)?
not sure sarah, i think that’s a good question, though. this is very much an experiment and we need to figure stuff like that out . . . we don’t really have a spoken or unspoken agreement. whoever wants to write can write. the only thing we ask is that people be themselves and have some insight in their posts . . .
I guess then the only thing for me to do is to keep peeking in and see what happens. Best of luck!
[…] in there over the last month or so. (If you don’t know what the aggregator is, have a look at Noah’s overview of the site.) The first observation is that the aggregator is both a blessing and a curse: There’s a lot […]