The Big Reveal
May 7th, 2006 by DaveI’ve said it over at Eurekaman and I’ll say it again here… Nakatomi is a parody of all that’s wrong with Web 2.0.
How it all started
Des and I had been complaining to each other for quite a while about certain alarming trends in the global web 2.0 community, things that puzzled, frustrated and annoyed us both.
The first was that it seemed every week would bring another few sites that showed nothing but a logo, an ambiguous, buzz-word labelled slogan and a space for your email address. This seemed like the web’s new way of generating hype, but it seemed misguided. Why should you expect anyone to provide a piece of personal information without any sort of relationship with them? As Des says:
It’s like as if a girl comes up to you, and you refuse to tell her anything about yourself until she gives you her phone number. Then maybe you call her.
Companies like 37signals can get away with this as they have a relationship with a lot of people already. They have an interesting blog, some great products, and everyone seems to have an opinion of them. I know that when 37signals announce a new product, I want to hear about it, I want to check it out; when they put up one of these pages, I sign up. But why should I care about some unknown web company that has no form of relationship with me? Why am I expected to give my email address without being told anything useful beforehand, and maybe not even after?
The second was a more fundamental one. Many of the new web 2.0 products seemed like solutions in search of a problem. It might use some interesting techniques (like AJAX or tagging) but ultimately has no real use. You might sit down and try out the demo, only to sit back and think: “What’s the point?”.
In these products, it seemed that the focus was on “Web 2.0ing” their product and not on creating something useful. I mentioned this in my comments over at Rowan Nairn’s blog. Rowan means well, but this worrying trend makes it impossible to associate “Web 2.0ing” with developing a good product. Arial, AJAX and a pastel colour scheme do not a good product make.
Des sent me his first idea for Nakatomi, and I came up a design which I then revised taking in some other suggestions, like that of Nathan Smith to have some shiney reflections.
The Logo
It was from the phrase “Nakatomi” that the logo was born. We wanted it to tie in with Die Hard but not be too obvious a link. I did a Google image search for Die Hard. It was then that I saw the inspiration for our logo… the Die Hard DVD cover.
I took the cover of the DVD, traced the building proper and the flames, played with the colours, and came up with the current logo.
It only occurred to us later that it might seem to have some connection to 9-11 (which some people have thought we were going for; either that or celery on fire), but as it was a good logo we decided to go for it anyway. I don’t see why we should always associate buildings and explosions with the World Trade Center… it’s a long standing tradition in movies. See The Towering Inferno, Ghostbusters, Independence Day, or The Matrix Reloaded (and Die Hard of course) for examples.
I loved the explosion in the logo because it makes no sense… why would you have an explosion in a logo? It’s a concept which is almost guaranteed to be ridiculous.
The Problem with Parodies
The biggest problem with parodies is that sometimes your subject may do a better job than you at parodying itself. When Nakatomi first launched, we thought we’d managed to shape some good nonsense, create a page that described nothing and made good fun of the worst aspects of web 2.0. As we were trying to be a good parody, we tried to keep everything just beyond the bounds of credibility.
A few days letter, we get an email from a friend pointing us towards potential competitors… real web 2.0 companies that were using the same terms as us, in the same way.
Again and again we tried to push the boundaries of credibility, again and again we’d find another web 2.0 product which was our “competitor”. I believe this is why some people were taken in by some of our work. No matter how far we pushed the boundaries of credibility, it seemed that some real company was always there operating in that space.
We did our best to make it obvious we were a parody without being explicit… Project Pulsar, for example, makes absolutely no sense, and we were sure to point out Skypod’s SHIT Engine and to always include “web-version: 2.0;” in our CSS files. But the problem is that when you are parodying nonsense, and your parody is nonsensical, you run the danger of sounding authentic.
The Consequences
There have been some comments recently implying a potential backlash to the whole Nakatomi parody, that it’s “a very small world”, and that we might have a problem with being taken seriously in future. However, I agree with Des when he says:
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.
If anything, I think it means that we will be judged by a higher standard of quality than others, and we’re okay with that.
As for me, it’s worked out pretty well so far. I had an interview on Friday for a 3 month contract position; the guys there saw the funny side of it and said it was like “bullshit bingo to the next level”. I start next week.
The Future
We have more great stuff in the pipeline. Stay tuned!
Commentary
Dermod Moore wrote a great article recently on Nakatomi which is definitely worth a read.
