Editor’s note from the future – Many of the links mentioned in these articles are dead. Follow them at your own risk. Or invent a time machine. Either way is cool with us.
Corporate.com
Monday, June 17
Corporate.comIn previous My Weeks, I have sat, in judgement, high atop my own personal Mount Criticism, proclaiming my opinions on such topics of import as Sesame Street CD’s, and Sesame Street videos. It was easy enough to pretend to be an expert on CD’s and videos, because, well, everybody kind of is these days. But the world wide web is different. In cyberspace, I don’t know nothin’ about nothin’.
Here’s an actual example from My Own True Life of how switched-on and intuitive I am about the internet: I pitched an online Flash animation series to a multimedia production company the day before the dot-com bust. The company in question literally fired half its staff twenty minutes before I got there. And I pitched my series on paper — I didn’t even think to stick Post-It notes to my laptop screen and pretend it was a Power Point presentation.
So, here’s a secret between you and me: This week, in order to appear more like a web expert (or “webspert”), I’m going to just make up my own jargon (such as “webspert”) and largely muddle through. And don’t worry, I want you all to know that before I start criticizing any websites, I’ve just taken a bottle of Windex and a clean damp cloth to the walls of my glass house here at Tough Pigs.
Incidentally, today I’m meant to be writing about Henson.com. Did you notice how much time I spent just now, patently not writing about Henson.com? It was all to avoid opening with this paragraph here:
Things I hate about Henson.com: It’s slow. It’s full of bad Flash design. It’s too commercial. It’s never updated. It’s difficult to navigate. It’s full of glitches. It has an Enter page, like maybe I didn’t really mean it when I typed in the address, and they’re giving me a chance to reconsider. It plays music at you and makes weird little beeping sounds. And, worst of all, it doesn’t even pretend to be fan-friendly.
There. I’ve said it. If this were a movie, I’d be the character who sat meekly through all the family arguments, never breathing a word, until suddenly blurting out a big tearful rant, right in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner, causing everyone to fall horribly silent, except for an elderly character actor who chokes on a piece of turkey. I’m played by Seth Green, let’s say, or Tobey Maguire. And the scene would end with Craig Allen, the head of Jim Henson Interactive, quietly putting down his napkin, clearing his throat, and walking pointedly from the room.
I’m sorry, Craig. I didn’t mean to be so harsh. You’ve done other things that are really cool. The Digital Performance System — that really rocks. And Muppet Race Mania — way to go. And MuppetWorld… well, let’s not talk about MuppetWorld. If it helps at all, you’re played by Tom Hanks.
But here’s the thing — it doesn’t matter that I hate Henson.com. It honestly, actually doesn’t, because I’m not the audience for Henson.com. The fans don’t matter there, and Craig knows that. When I said it was corporate, and not fan-friendly, I summed up the point of the website, which is to give Henson a presence online and make them look like a living, breathing company. The site is actually an online press kit — it’s a message to other businesses, potential buyers, TV networks: “Here we are, this is what we’ve done, this is what we’re capable of doing, and hey, look how much we spent on graphic design.”
The Henson.com that would make me happy, that would make all the fans happy, would be like an online version of Jim Henson: The Works — detailed episode guides, behind-the-scenes photos, full to bursting with information, fun, downloads, screensavers, features, creatures and hidden treasures. It would be updated weekly, if not daily — and it would be free, all free!
But, duh. That’s just not feasible. Not for Henson, not for any comparable production company. The web just doesn’t work like that. It never did; it’s just that for a long time everybody acted like it would one day, and spent huge amounts of time and money on really ambitious things (like MuppetWorld, and the old Henson.com), which fooled the fans into thinking we deserve that kind of thing, all the time and on demand.
Some corporate dot-coms still play along — Star Trek’s official sites are a good example, and advance hype sites for big event movies, but they’re in a whole different category. Henson.com doesn’t need to compete with stuff like that. And it doesn’t need to try to please the fans. As you’ll see tomorrow, we do a pretty good job of that on our own.
Craig knows all this. And he’s okay with it. Right, Craig? You can come back to the dining room now. Dianne Weist is about to serve dessert.
by Kynan Barker
