Rumor that AEBN cut most/all Naked Sword staff?

[gaybucks_chip]

I heard a rumor today that AEBN abruptly laid off either a significant portion or nearly all of the Naked Sword staff in San Francisco.

I see that nakedsword.com is also offline, but I know a couple of ISPs have had issues today, so dunno if it's that or the work of an angry laid-off employee.

Has anyone heard anything?

[gaydemon]

Interesting.. A bit related to what we discussed about the Pistol Media merger then. whistle

But I'm sorry to hear that for the people concerned or affected.

[dzinerbear]

Interesting ... I just checked and thesword.com and gaypornblog.com are also down.

I'm not surprised really. I remember when Choice Hotels (Quality Inns) bought Journey's End Motels (a chain I worked for in Canada). For the first little while the signs on the hotels said Journey's End Toronto Center by Quality Inns or Journey's End Sudbury by Comfort Inns. And then after a couple of years all the signs were replaced and the "Journey's End" brand was completely gone.

It'll be interesting to see what's going to happen with those blogs though, that's a lot of writing and SE ranking to just trash.

Michael

[gaybucks_chip]

Looks like things are back up now, wonder if we'll ever know what caused the downtime?

[desslock]

When I pull up thesword, I just get a Joomla error.

Well... technical problems are not at all the same as cutting "most/all" Naked Sword staff.

It is three weeks before the GayVN Awards, which Naked Sword is the main sponsor. This is would a very strange time to just stop everything during this time when so much money is committed to this promotion.

Steve

[AlexManifestMan]

My understanding is that AEBN is a very large customer of the same server company that I use. There was an outage yesterday for just over 5 hours. It was a huge mess.

[HunkMoneyLuke]

I don't know if its true or not, but its typical. The first thing a company that takes over another company does is integrate the new assets into their own established systems, the second thing it does is cut the fat. Its business 101.

[tombarr]

I don't know if its true or not, but its typical. The first thing a company that takes over another company does is integrate the new assets into their own established systems, the second thing it does is cut the fat. Its business 101.

But haven't they owned Naked Sword for a while now? Not really a new integration with them. If this were about Pistol Media I would agree, but Naked Sword? Unless perhaps they are thinking of using the Pistol Media Staff and facilities and integrate the Naked Sword properties with their operations.

[dzinerbear]

But haven't they owned Naked Sword for a while now?

But Tim Valenti might have had a "you can't kill my company for x number of months" clauses in the buy out agreement.

Michael

[LavenderLounge]

I heard Albert is gone, but I haven't heard about anyone else.

[desslock]

well ok. Now that there's no longer NakedAlbert, maybe now I should look into getting Albert naked. :D

Steve

[Squirt]

Today is the first "work day" since this thread was created, hopefully we'll hear from one of the two parties involved.

I can't believe they'd let things like this float around forums without setting things right, it's not good for business.

[Kushiel]

Hey guys - I just got into the office a bit ago and wanted to clear a few things up.

First - yes, we have lost a few of the crew over at the NS office in San Fran, but we're definitely not losing the entire office, nor even planning to.

Second - Our sites were down for a while because of server issues, but I've been told that they should be back up and running now. If you're finding anything that's not back in the clear, I'd really appreciate a quick poke with any info you can give me - I'll make sure that the tech-y people know about asap.

Thanks guys.

~Trevor

[AlexManifestMan]

We host with the same company. The sites going down was a totally freak occurrence. They had big power failure. They switched over to their primary generator which then caught fire. They were forced to leave the building by the fire department. The secondary generator gave out and they had to get a 'replacement replacement' generator. Which broke the next day.

Not a great couple days for these folks. But they did stay on top of it.

[Kushiel]

Yeah, at the end of the day Friday, I heard about there being wonky stuff going on with our server set and the power being out.. I totally didn't know about the fire thing, though!

Wow.

[AlexManifestMan]

Check out the pictures on their site....it is pretty amazing. I think a lot of people here secondary generator and think 'Home Depot' but this is a huge thing that is towed by an eighteen wheeler.

[gaybucks_chip]

I don't know what it is with backup generators and ISPs. Some years ago, we were with an ISP that had a cage in an enormous data center in San Francisco (among other things, it's the main San Francisco data center for what is now ATT wireless).

The local power company had an enormous outage that lasted about 10 hours, and the generator at this place -- which was the size of a big dump truck - worked for about an hour and quit. Apparently a bearing or something inside went bad.

A similar issue happened at a different data center. They test these thigns every month, but apparently the generators are just a bit cranky or something.

Glad to hear that things are basically well with NS/AEBN. It's amazing how quickly things can get blown out of proportion in the rumor mill.

[AnthonyDeAngelo]

power failures are a pain but it does always pay to have a back up - we too had an enormous generator park in our alley to supply our entire city block in beverly hills with power when one transformer went down - it lasted a week - it wasn't all that big...

but, all of this down time makes you wonder when where it all comes from doesn't it and, at what price to the environment!

I'll be happy when we have our new solar and wind farms ready here and supplying a large part of OUR county's needs without sending it away to SF or LA!

[desslock]

I heard Albert is gone, but I haven't heard about anyone else.

Ok..... Albert was, I believe, Naked Sword's affiliate manager.... so that's some relevant news for a webmaster board....does Naked Sword now have a contact for affiliates?

Steve

[Fister]

Ok..... Albert was, I believe, Naked Sword's affiliate manager.... so that's some relevant news for a webmaster board....does Naked Sword now have a contact for affiliates?

Steve

Good question. As AEBN and NakedSword have been merged for many months now, I've had great service recently from my AEBN rep, Nina. But, I have not brought any NakedSword issues to her.