Today we look at and compare two veteran nudist portals on the Internet: Clothes Free and NetNude. Neither has ever granted us an interview, although NetNude did at first give its assent.
Both Clothes Free and NetNude purport to espouse strict naturist standards, eschewing anything imbued with sexuality. This we don’t argue, however, both also sell extra features, namely photos and/or video clips and dvds. Clothes Free refers to purchasing the extra content as buying membership in its ad hoc nudist group, the INA (International Naturist Association), while NetNude likes to call it a “donation”.
While most nudists like to look at photos related to their lifestyles, not many would actually pay to see things they see regularly anyway. Nudist Day can’t help but suspect that the vast majority of those who actually buy into this are non-nudist men, many of whom are looking for a cup of titillation, thus the income generated by these two portals may be seen as “nudist prostitution” by some. Sad but true, despite the abundance of readily available pornography on the web, many men still think nudism is sexually stimulating. Of course, they’ve never visited a nudist club or their fantasy world would already be shattered!
Clothes Free produces weekly video segments with the latest “naturist news”. While the production is slick, and president Corey Mangold does an excellent job as a presenter, the same cannot be said about many of the other “nudecasters”, the term they coined for their interviewers. Clothes Free seems content on handing a microphone to whoever is naked and willing. The newscasts also suffer from a bit too much of the “weeee, we’re naked!” syndrome. California-based Clothes Free’s team doesn’t travel much beyond the continental US and the Caribbean, but still reports on foreign events and venues.
Clothes Free’s photo galleries are of good quality and generally in good taste. A number of them were submitted by members and are obviously selectively included in the collection. In NetNude’s case, the photos are submitted by the members themselves and there’s maybe a tad too many single guys posing on rocks for their own digicams!
The general look and feel of Clothes Free’s site is more contemporary, albeit a tad messy, with a few too many annoying animated gifs, pop-ups and “follow you around” menus. NetNude, on the other hand, really needs to hire a graphic artist: Their site is a pink-green-peach eyesore, with a homemade look, circa 1994. The owners, based in Canada, had told us last year that they were updating their look (the reason why they didn’t have time for an interview), but they obviously didn’t learn.
In terms of free content, both portals do a pretty good job of listing all the nudist venues and events in the world and both offer forums, but NetNude does win over Clothes Free in terms of original content, as the latter often just links into other sites content, but then again, it’s focus is on selling its core product, which is the “nudecasts”.
In conclusion, we can say that both sites perform an important role of informing both nudists and prospective nudists, but both could use a more manicured look, lest we be thought of as an unkempt bunch of naked people!

Related Links:

• Net Nude
• Clothes Free