Fauna Urbana


 * This article is about the website, for the zine see Fauna Urbana (fanzine).

Fauna Urbana, also known as Fauna, was a Portuguese furry news portal and social networking site run by Tanuki Gokuhi, Ekevoo, Aniki Geelong, Jrrhack and Reyres. It was also the home of FaunaCast, the first furry podcast in Brazil.

History
Fauna Urbana was launched on 2004, founded by Jrrhack label as a fanzine. Production halted after the fourth edition. It subsequently become the name for Jrrhack's blog, leaving the limelight until 2009 when it become a news portal.

The original idea for Fauna Urbana the fanzine was created by Moonsong, Jrrhack label, TameWolf and Isra with support from Hwei Chow, Thassy and Vilani Vila and was a small publication bringing poetry, art and news about the furry community all written in portuguese. All four versions were published for free as PDF and also black and white in printed version, the originals were lost in a hardware crash in 2006.



Fauna Urbana in 2009
Reyres, Ekevoo and Tanuki Gokuhi had plans to create a news portal around 2008, because Brazil always lacked an unbiased source of news about the fandom. After months of planning, they asked for permission to Jrrhack to christen this new portal Fauna Urbana.

Aniki Geelong was invited to be part of the development team, and helped to convert the portal layouts made by Tanuki Gokuhi to XHTML/CSS. Since July, heavy research was done to choose the best platform. Development work finally ended on 7 November 2009 with the launch of the new website.

Ekevoo was choose to be the hostmaster and proudly hosts Fauna Urbana in a dedicated server located on a strategic backbone. Tanuki Gokuhi was choosen to head of the news portal; all changes, updates and partnerships are his responsibility. Reyres and Aniki Geelong are admins and press leaders. Jrrhack is the patron and still updates his own Fauna Urbana personal blog.

Fauna Urbana in 2010
Fauna Urbana soon became a successful portal to news, entertainment and information about furries for all Brazilians, not only for usual people but also for the media, since there was a sudden interest from various media groups on publishing furry related material. The new and revamped portal hosted writers, podcasts, interviews and links to events and fun.

Caio
By August 2010, Fauna Urbana awarded Jao for his first place at the mascot drawing contest, the contest awarded 1 year of VIP subscription at DeviantArt plus various other minor prizes to all other competitors. See contest winner for more details.

Caio is a Brazilian bird (Cyanocorax chrysops) with black feathers and blue features, he is Fauna Urbana official character he always carry with him his red hoodie with Fauna Urbana logo in the back and he has his own blog. Caio is also the official ombudsman for the portal, since he is the impersonation of the whole crew.

Modus operandi
Fauna Urbana was a collaborative press website, similar to Flayrah. Visitors could send their articles to Fauna Urbana, and after approval they were published under their names. Everyone could be a contributor. Every article, HQ, comic sent, earnt the user points called "Fauna Points", which could be used to trade things on the Fauna Urbana website.

Fauna Urbana Network
With the huge growing of this community,, importance and appearance on media, the group Fauna Urbana started to officially manage Abando in june 2010, that means that from 2008 to 2010 it was an independent move from local furries, it also means that Fauna Urbana has now its own event, maintaining the same organization and adding new staff.

And in 18 july 2010, Fauna Urbana has also delivered a new service to the furry community, it has now turned into a social network like a mix of twitter and facebook and blog. This beta version code named Vincertid, due to the picture made by Strangefox that inspired the development team, now Fauna Urbana is grouped into a Network (FUN - Fauna Urbana Network) and let people create and manage their own personal social network "fur-net" so to speak, able to add friends, create personal blogs and customize the way one hearts desires.furries

Furries.com.br store


By November 22, 2010, the Fauna Urbana Network started a Brazilian furry store, which will feature many products from the furry fandom like magazines, artwork, keyrings, mugs, t-shirts and fursuits. In the first days, it was to collect information on what the Brazilian fandom wanted using a voting system and then build a supply chain.

For that, three new characters were created, as "brothers" to Caio, the official mascot. They are Carlos, Ana and Gui; each character have some preferences and will help anchor products and help the user to purchase depending on style. Carlos is a brown squirrel, geeky and like to live the internet life. Ana dragon thingy likes to hang around with friends and like more artistic stuff while Gui a white tiger is more fun and anime oriented.

The store was to have as many payments and shipping methods as possible so as to avoid people from having to use credit cards to direct bank payments, which in Brazil is a big deal.

English version
Fauna Urbana, launching its English-language version in Spring 2010, intended to be international and looked for contributors to make it possible, via Tanuki Gokuhi; thirteen stories were posted through to October 2011.

FaunaCast
Simultaneously with the 2009 relaunch of Fauna Urbana came a new podcast, FaunaCast, which is the first podcast in Brazil that talks about furry. The team was the same as Fauna Urbana except for Jrrhack. Twelve episodes were posted through to November 2014.

Focinho a Focinho
Focinho a Focinho (literally "Nose to Nose" or "Muzzle to Muzzle"') is a podcast, hosted by Titus and HweiChow, which began on April 25, 2010.

Other multimedia
Fauna Urbana announced on April 23, 2010, that the site would begin hosting user-submitted "podcasts, comics, chronicles and blogs" in addition to allowing for multi-user collaboration and user comments on submissions and administrator news articles.