@LARGELeaping leviathans
By Scott KirsnerHave you encountered the phrase "jump the shark" yet?
In pop culture, jumping the shark is when something that was once very good -- it could be a TV show, a band, or a series of movie sequels -- makes a desperate attempt to remain fresh and relevant, and instead goes bad.
The origin of the phrase comes from the long-running TV show "Happy Days," which immediately went south following a gimmicky episode in which Fonzie, wearing water skis and his trademark leather jacket, jumped over a shark. There is, of course, a Web site dedicated to shark-jumping: www.jumptheshark.com.
"Diff'rent Strokes" jumped the shark when the producers decided Gary Coleman was no longer cute enough to sustain the ratings, and they introduced a younger, cuter kid -- the red-headed Sam. Van Halen jumped the shark when the band booted David Lee Roth.
It's fun to debate when the exact moment of shark-jumpage occurred. For Stevie Wonder, was it when he released "I Just Called to Say I Love You" or "Ebony and Ivory"? Did the "Star Wars" series jump the shark with the introduction of Jar Jar Binks, the annoying computer-animated Rastafarian rabbit from "Episode I: The Phantom Menace"? Can it jump back with the release of the next film in 2002?
Troubled or extinct high-tech companies aren't immune to shark-jump speculation. It's an interesting pastime for the post-dot com era, replete with humor, nostalgia, and a bit of detachment. Andover-based CMGI may have jumped the shark last year when it agreed to pay a record-breaking $120 million to name the new Patriots football venue CMGI Field. But some argue that the actual moment of liftoff might've occurred earlier, when chief executive David Wetherell started talking about CMGI evolving into "the General Electric of the Internet."
Did Lycos jump the shark when Wetherell killed a deal for the company to be acquired by Barry Diller's USA Networks?
Lars Perkins of the Boston office of Idealab says that the Nasdaq Stock Market jumped the shark when it declared its intentions to take itself public earlier this year.
Perkins adds that the now-defunct grocery delivery service Streamline.com "jumped the shark for me when they gave me a free refrigerator. It was all downhill from there. Though including their customers in their `friends and family' [discounted stock purchase] program at their IPO was a delicious encore."
Since turnabout is fair play, several friends of the column suggest that the Boston office of Idealab jumped the shark when it decided to lease some of the city's most expensive retail space, the old Exeter Street Theater on Newbury Street, for its offices. (Afterward, Idealab was forced to pull its own IPO.)
Other incubators had their own shark-jumping moments, too.100x, an incubator started by onetime Lycos chief technologist Ken Lang, jumped the shark when it named itself 100x, which implies a one-hundred-times return on the money it invested. (It's now out of business.) Many people remember the opening party for Cambridge Incubator, at which the company gave out free crystal eggs to attendees for no readily apparent reason, as a rather early shark-jumping moment. (Eggs? Incubator? Whatever.)
Could EMC's shark-jump have occurred when cofounder Richard Egan left to be ambassador to Ireland? The news since then has been almost uniformly dreary.
Speaking of the Emerald Isle, some people claim that MIT's Media Lab jumped the shark when it started franchising itself to other continents, beginning with the Media Lab Europe in Dublin. Others say the shark jump happened when Nicholas Negroponte stepped down as executive director last year amid internal bickering about the Lab's future.
Furniture.com jumped the shark when the company moved from a run-down brick warehouse in Worcester to a ritzy, custom-designed headquarters in Framingham, where the interior design mimicked that of a suburban house, complete with working garage door.
Ralph Protsik of Boston Search Group writes that an "e-mail I received from [technology trade magazine] the Industry Standard in early June may have landed on the shark."
In it, the Standard announced that it was now not only a magazine publisher, but an institution of higher learning, offering a program called Standard U. The curriculum was described as "invaluable for business leaders who want to come to grips with the 21st-century economy." Those who registered early were eligible for "The Industry Standard Scholarship Program," which would cover 25 percent of the tuition. The Standard itself went out of business before the fall semester started. (The Standard had been funded in part by Boston's International Data Group.)
Of course, every one of your former employers jumped the shark when you left. (This argument doesn't work so well if you left when the company went out of business, however.)
There are divergent opinions as to when Digital Equipment Corp. jumped the shark. One venture capitalist says it happened when DEC started overspending on its semiconductor business to develop the Alpha chip, while neglecting the company's more profitable services business. Serial entrepreneur Vinit Nijhawan writes that Digital jumped the shark even earlier, "when Ken Olsen declared that there was no place in the office for `personal' computers."
Nijhawan adds that " Compaq jumped the shark when they bought Digital, and Hewlett-Packard will jump the shark if they merge with Compaq."
An entrepreneur who asked for anonymity suggests that Needham-based trade show producer Key3Media, which runs the giant Comdex consumer electronics conclave in Las Vegas, jumped the shark when it hired Fred Rosen to be the company's chief executive. Rosen, who formerly ran Ticketmaster, is legendarily abrasive.
Lotus jumped the shark when IBM acquired it in 1995.
Voice recognition pioneer Dragon Systems jumped the shark when the founders agreed to sell to Lernout & Houspie. Almost immediately afterward, financial irregularities at L&H came to light and the company began to unravel. Now, Dragon founders Jim and Janet Baker are trying to un-jump the shark by regaining control of their company.
But Jon Hein, the Long Island computer consultant who runs the Web site www.jumptheshark.com and popularized the phrase, informs me by e-mail that "once something jumps the shark, it can theoretically jump back, but it is extremely rare. For example, some folks think `The Daily Show' [on Comedy Central] jumped back when [current host] Jon Stewart took over for Craig Kilborn." That doesn't bode well for the Bakers.
Career site Monster.com hasn't yet jumped the shark, but chief executive Jeff Taylor tempts fate every time he puts on a wet suit and goes water-skiing behind a blimp. (Taylor currently holds the world record.) Now, if he decided to don a leather jacket ...
I'm expecting someone to e-mail me any minute now to make the case that this column has finally jumped the shark with all this talk about jumping the shark.
Digital evening at Locke-Ober
The women's technology networking group DigitalEve marks its first anniversary with a party at Locke-Ober (now run by Lydia Shire) tomorrow night. The DigitalEve affair marks the start of the high-tech holiday party season. Details at www.digitaleveboston.org.
The future arrives Friday
I'm looking forward to heading west on Friday for a half-day colloquium called "Imagining the Future: Visions of the World to Come" at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Speakers include "2001" author Sir Arthur C. Clarke, National Medal of Technology winner Ray Kurzweil, and Alison Taunton-Rigby, president of Forester Biotech. I'm moderating, and I hope to get the chance to ask Sir Arthur (who will be there via satellite hookup) to kindly explain the psychedelic ending sequence in "2001: A Space Odyssey." Info at www.wpi.edu.
Scott Kirsner is a contributing editor at Wired and Fast Company magazines.