How Bad is it to Not Have a Home Page?

[PatrickGriffith]

The site I'm currently developing is far different than any other project I've every worked on in that search traffic is likely to represent only a very small percentage of the total traffic.  Because of this, I want to make sure I optimize the site for the people clicking from Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc more so than the BIG G.

I can't for the life of me think of a reason to have a home page other than for SEO purposes.  I'd much rather throw the user directly into the experience than have him be distracted by a home page.  At the same time, I'd like to salvage any search engine traffic that I can.

My plan is to 301 redirect chucklebot.com/ to /funny-memes/SOME_RANDOM_IMAGE and then put the content of the current home page at /about.  Does that kill any possibility of the site ranking well?  Or can the subpages (eg /meme-generator) still rank well if they are properly optimized?

Thanks!

[HandsomeWeb]

It should make no difference, because Google will consider /funny-memes/SOME_RANDOM_IMAGE as your homepage.  But people would link to just chucklebot.com, not that long url.

Why not just serve the content from /funny-memes/SOME_RANDOM_IMAGE on the domain name.. Google would actually like updated content on the page, and if people build links, they will build links.