last night, it’s fresh in my mind).
As a cultural phenomenon, it recurs every now and again, and it’s fascinating to see what it’s a symptom of. What new dream is fading, what shibboleths are surfacing, what cultural norms are being ridiculed? When it happens, a bubble has to burst somewhere.
I wandered into Nakatomi unaware, and was immediately impressed with its style and ambition, although I should have trusted my instinct on hating the logo as being too reminiscent of 9/11. I put it down to naiveté on their part, young dudes getting off on explosive phallic imagery, and put my name down to be kept informed anyway. Given that the guys behind it are in Dublin, I wanted to see what the best web heads were up to in my home town, given that I’m on the lookout for bright sparks to join me in my business.
It’s a parody, though, and David Barrett comes clean about it here, saying “what we were claiming made no sense, had no substance, and didn’t describe anything”, although butter wouldn’t melt in his and Des Traynor’s mouths only last week, to read them here. Along the way, a few people have been taken in, and sure isn’t it gas. One look at the name Nakatomi should have been enough of a clue, but I was never a fan of Die Hard. There were plenty of other clues around if I had kept my eyes peeled.
The hype continues though, with the highly plausible skypod, and one wonders how it’s going to end, and how much more effort they’re going to put in to respond humouring other well-meaning eejits like me, out of the geek in-joke circuit, who get caught in their stylish web and find themselves effortlessly ending up looking like pompous asses.
As well as parodying the hype around new startups, (and PR hype is always worth sending up in any era, and in any medium, in this world where The Real Thing™ is a sugary brown fizzy liquid), they are also parodying some of the qualities that geeks may despise, but most people want: ease of use, simplicity of design, the pleasure that well-designed AJAX gives to the user. The user experience, low in priority for far too long in cyberspace, is now climbing up to the top of the pile, and long may it reign. Yes, an application or website has to work, yes, the ideas behind it have to be good and they have to meet a real need, and not just be cool. But no one is seriously suggesting that “blog posts are as important as code” (commented out in the code of nakatomiweb.com, a parody too far, even for them). Blogs and blog posts help build up an idea of someone’s character and world-view. They help build relationships and networks, inspire confidence and trust in the associated site/product/service. They are helping to personalize the internet, which to me can only be a good thing.
I’m not a coder, and I can understand that coders may be very cynical about the trend towards looking good, and suspect that style is threatening to overcome substance. But it was ever thus; the internet is only catching up with the rest of the world. And there will always be hype – but at web2ireland I learned just how serious business can be, how tough the competition is out there. The cleverness that the Nakatomi lads have shown in creating their nebulous world is something that they should capitalize on, in Hollywood or Madison Avenue or the valley. I understand the entire parody has a serious point, and I fully believe David Barrett when he says about web2.0 that the “focus should always, ALWAYS, be on creating a great product.” I wish him and Des well when they do come up with a great product – but I wonder, when he gets to marketing it, how he’s going to distance himself from the sour whiff of the stale piss-take of Nakatomi.
{ 3 } Comments
Hi Dermod
Some of us do our best to promote web2.0 activities and ventures, whilst others are too busy “taking the piss”
Your last few sentences hit the nail on the head and as we all know “its a very small world”
Btw, best of luck with your venture
Talk soon
Fergus
Its an interesting read, and a good post Dermod. Nakatomi is a parody. It’s a parody of all the websites around the net that talk big and don’t deliver. Soo many sites out there tell you they will change your world, once their product is complete. Until then you give them an email address and sit back. It was after browsing the umpteenth site that I said to Dave how it was pissing me off and we to create the “ultimate” web 2.0 product. No application, no possible uses, hundreds of promises and zero delivery.
Even now I could still give you a list of maybe 15 sites I know that have nothing to offer other than big promises and bigger text input boxes begging for your email address. That was the motivation, and that is what we were taking the piss out of, just to be clear.
Another interesting 2.0 trend is creating products that solve problems no one ever seemed to have. That is where Skypod was supposed to come in, admitedly I got carried away and made it sounds plausible, even useful. Skypod would be a great product if you didn’t have to implement it. But there are many “mashup” products that really seem pointless, smashing Skype and iPods together really seemed appropriate.
To Fergus:
At Nakatomi we did indeed rip the piss out of the web2.0 buzzword and its associated hype. We weren’t the only people do it, we weren’t the first people to do it, and we certainly won’t be the last either. We didn’t name and shame any companies or ventures, we merely parodied the unjustified hype that follows the 2.0 label.
If you think I am too busy “taking the piss” out of web 2.0 activities and ventures, then why would I bother writing a detailed and glowing review of one of Irelands best “web 2.0″ ventures pxn8[1]. Pxn8 is a superb piece of work, by a clearly talented programmer (walter) and deserves hype. Not because its AJAX, not because its 2.0, not even because it’s Irish. It deserves it, because its a great product that solves a problem I see every day. If any of the Irish start-ups develop good software I will not hesitate to spread the word, nor have I yet. So if Nakatomi has offended you, then you are interpreting it incorrectly (unless you actually run a company that produces community based ajax powered distributed 2.0 aggregation software, in which case Nakatomi should be the least of your worries) We weren’t taking the piss out of anything except for the hype.
As for Dermods “how will be distance ourselves from nakatomi”, and fergus added threat “It’s a small world”, again I don’t understand the motivation. If David or I ever develop a truly great piece of software while working for ourselves, I don’t believe that Nakatomi will stand in its way. You can always tell the good software apart from the hyped up fluff because you use it and it works. I use pxn8 for that exact reason. I accept that I will never be able to generate that much hype again without backing it up with a good product.I am okay with that, I don’t intend to develop another parody product any time soon.
Dermod: Thank you for your kind wishes, I will continue to read your blog and indeed your column. Apologies if you were duped, my consolation is that at least you know to be on the look out
Des Traynor
(btw: In Die Hard one, the terrorists blow the roof apart. Thats what the logo was supposed to be, not celery on fire, or a 9/11 logo)
** Links to support this Comment**
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/10/21.html
Joel Spolsky is an highly respected software developer whose weblog JoelOnSoftware. He refers to web 2.0 saying “It’s not a real concept. It has no meaning. It’s a big, vague, nebulous cloud of pure architectural nothingness.”
http://www.fleck.com
These guys came along after Nakatomi and are the dutch equivalent.
http://www.web20generator.com/
You give these people a snappy web 2.0 style name, and they produce a web2.0 product page that looks pretty believable.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/web3point0
This is an article by Jeffrey Zeldman, probably the most well respected web developer going these days. He also dissects what exactly web 2.0 means and finds little inside.
http://www.minds.may.ie/~dez/serendipity/index.php?/archives/53-pxn8-The-Best-Online-Picture-Editing-Web-Application.html
A link to a review of pxn8(a product by sxoop tecnologies) that I wrote in March.
Excellent commentary.
The rest of us, whether we were duped or not, will simply continue working on our ideas.
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