Pingpong.com--one of the start-ups to spring from Kingston Technology Co.'s unusual in-house incubator program--plans to change the way people navigate the Web to find information.
And someday, the Fountain Valley company will be willing to talk about what it's developing.
Pingpong has quietly plugged away at its line of Web applications for months. In doing so, the company has created a curious rumble throughout Orange County's technology community, as people wonder, "What exactly are those guys working on?"
Of course, it helps that the company's financial backers--Kingston founders John Tu and David Sun--made national news last winter when they announced that they were using their personal and corporate fortunes to give Kingston employees whatever they need to bootstrap a new business.
Each time the media covered Kingston's unconventional business practices, there was Pingpong. And each time, Pingpong officials politely declined to talk about what they were doing.
Then there are Pingpong's ties to the computer-game community. The staff, many of whom are avid game players, have created online teams and routinely challenge others to jump into a quick round of digital bloodshed over the Internet. And they showed up at an underground video-game party in Irvine on New Year's Eve, where they spent three days playing games and handing out bumper stickers with the company's logo.
No one talked about what Pingpong makes. However, gamers dubbed the company's corporate logo--a yellow block with a black spiral behind the name--as "really cool."
"There's always been some appeal to being mysterious in marketing," said Kevin Lane Keller, a marketing professor at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. "It works really well for established brands, such as Chanel or Rolls-Royce. For a lot of these young companies on the Web, it's harder to pull off."
Such shyness flies in the face of traditional marketing plans for young "dot-coms," where the story on the Web has been all about guerrilla marketing, word-of-mouth buzz and public flash. Big parties with open bars, expensive gifts and lots of celebrities--both of the Hollywood and the venture capital type--have become the norm.
Indeed, at this week's Spring Internet World 2000 in Los Angeles, more than 500 Net businesses will descend upon the Convention Center to promote their latest and greatest products.
