(Photo: OKFocus)

The Merry Pranksters

From Old Spice’s viral “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign to the contentious Skittles spot that made One Million Moms cry bestiality, bizarre or aggressive advertising has become commonplace in our internet-addled society. To nab the attention of customers toggling between screens, advertisers frequently toe the line between inappropriate and outrageous, but few are as unabashedly controversial as the Queens-based OKFocus. Named to AdAge’s Creativity 50 in July, OKFocus is a rebel brand’s dream, equal parts design snob and attention-seeking internet troll. And as advertising moves online, OKFocus clients like Google and the Museum of Contemporary Art have taken note.

Helmed by Ryder Ripps, Jonathan Vingiano and Jules LaPlace, the boutique digital firm has implemented its fair share of next-gen, buzzy web products, including a live online dance party for Smirnoff and a game for Google Plus’s video-chat system that, using facial recognition technology, allows users to draw on the screen without using the mouse or keyboard.

The boundary-pushing agency is perhaps most notorious for its foray into pranksterism with WhoDat.Biz, a domain lookup site that purported to be the first company born of rapper Kanye West’s new startup, Donda Media. Users were shocked: did the stylish rapper just put out an ugly update of Whois.net? It took several hours before tech blogs realized that OKFocus was behind the viral prank. In one fell swoop, OKFocus called attention to the internet’s false preconceptions about Mr. West’s startup and demonstrated how dangerous the hive-mind can be when it latches onto bogus news, serving up a valuable lesson for brands and consumers alike.

What differentiates the agency’s aesthetic from others is its devotion to levity, to the idea that design can and should be fun. By mixing this philosophy with cutting-edge web technology, OKFocus creates products that stick in the minds of users long after they’ve moved onto the next big thing. As Mr. Vingiano put it in an interview with The Creator’s Project, “There’s something about this lack of humor in modern web design that is just so appalling.”

When OKFocus realized, for example, that New Yorkers frequently complain about unreliable L train service, they devised Is the L Train Fucked?, a single-serving website that flashes “yes” or “no” depending on the train’s status. By capitalizing on zeitgeist-y controversy and translating it in a humorous way, the trio behind OKFocus have established themselves as expert buzz-builders, unafraid of deploying a good stunt. As TV advertisers rush to out-weird themselves, OKFocus’s trolling instincts seem like the natural evolution of an industry obsessed with going viral.

Next: Dan Loeb, Third Point LLC: the Poison Pen

Back to the beginning

Mr. Vingiano and Mr. Ripps. (okfoc.us)

After some sleuthing, Betabeat discovered that WhoDat.biz is in fact a project of New York-based OkFocus, a full service digital agency run by Ryder Ripps and Jonathan Vingiano that's notorious for their PR stunts.

Mr. Vingiano confirmed to us over email that WhoDat.biz is "an OKFocus project."

We reached out to Small Girls PR, friends of OKFocus, and asked about the project.

"Way to punk the entire Internet, Mr. Vingiano!" we said.

"Yeah, he's very good at that," they responded. "He used to run a @Balenciaga twitter in which the L was actually an upercase i ... rihanna retweeted it."

OKFocus is also behind Is the L Train Fucked? and Dump.fm.

When we reached out to the fake Donda Media address, they originally responded with AIM slang--"a/s/l?" After some back and forth, we finally laid it on the line: "C'mon, Ryder," we wrote. "It will feel so good to be honest. And then you can get press for OkFocus while everyone still cares! This WSJ article obviously didn't do you justice."

The folks at OKFocus responded, "Hehe. Yes it's an OkFocus project." Mr. Ripps even duped his friends, posting a link to WhoDat.Biz on his Facebook page 18 hours ago, along with the following commentary:

Since everyone was fooled, we'll take it upon ourselves to dish out some grades on how long it took various sites to realize the whole thing was a hoax.

The Washington Post: F
Headline: Kanye West’s Donda Media unveils Whodat.biz, the ‘Facebook of Websites’
Time posted: 4:09 p.m. EST
Time redacted: Not yet (as of 7:03 p.m.)

Gizmodo: B
Headline: What the Hell is Kanye's Insane Tech Start Up? updated to This Can't Possibly Be Kanye's Insane Tech Start Up, Can It?
Time posted: 2:53 p.m.
Time redacted: 5:30 p.m. (That New "Donda Media" Site Is Fake As Hell (Updated))

Buzzfeed: B
Headline: Kanye's New Startup is Ridiculous
Time posted: 2pm-ish
Time redacted: 3:47pm (via a tweet and an update: Kanye's New Startup Is Ridiculous (Update: And Fake))

Betabeat: B, because it took a helpful tweet sent just after our original post to cue us in. Also, apparently everyone in New York knew; we were told we "need more Facebook friends."
Headline: Introducing Kanye West’s Bizarre New Startup, WhoDat.Biz
Time posted: 4:10 p.m. (but updated at 4:15 p.m. to Introducing Kanye West’s Possibly Fake But Definitely Bizarre New Startup, WhoDat.Biz [UPDATED])
Time redacted: 5:35 p.m. (Fake Kanye Site Punks Internet, 30 Minutes Later Internet Debunks Fake Kanye Site) and 6:13 p.m. (Meet OKFocus, the PR Stuntmen Behind Fake Kanye West Site WhoDat.biz)

PopDust: A, for being skeptical from the start.

(dondamedia.com)

Have you ever thought, "Domain lookup tool Whois works well as a service, but I wish it had a little more SWAG?" Or perhaps, "I like Whois, but it just doesn't yell at me in caps lock enough." Luckily Kanye West has you covered, with the launch of his new startup, WhoDat.biz (no it's seriously called that though).

WhoDat is essentially a domain owner lookup service, exactly like Whois.net--a well-known lookup site owned by Verio Inc.--but with bigger font and more unnecessary scrolling. You enter in a URL and it also uses the standard whois protocol to pull up the GoDaddy information for that registrant. It's the "Facebook of Websites," guys.

Mr. West originally announced the creation of Donda Media, the company behind WhoDat, on his Twitter feed back in January. "DONDA is a design company which will galvanize amazing thinkers and put them in a creative space to bounce there[sic] dreams and ideas," he tweeted.

Unsurprisingly, WhoDat has received some scathing reactions. Gizmodo called it insane. Famed blogger Anil Dash sarcastically tweeted, "Hoping that @DondaMedia follows up the amazing http://WHODAT.BIZ with http://WHATDAIPADDRESS.INFO to give me the details on my IP address!" The sarcasm was apparently lost on Donda Media, which immediately retweeted it.

Perhaps in response to the backlash, Donda posted an animated .gif of Mr. West to their Tumblr with the text, "Haters give me them salty looks." Our apologies, sir.

If the entire goal of WhoDat was to capture the attention of the Internet for all of five minutes, it certainly worked.

"Every generation gets the whois service it deserves," tweeted artist Mike Monteiro. We brought this on ourselves, people. And there's no going back.

UPDATE: We're skeptical that this is an official Kanye/Donda business venture. Though Donda is indeed a real entity, Kanye himself hasn't tweeted to confirm WhoDat.Biz is a part of Donda. As Steve Spillman of GroupMe tweeted, "u know i love you guys but that is the fakest possible attempt at pretending to be donda." We can't disagree. We've reached out to Donda and will update if and when they get back to us. An auto-response email from the company reads, "Thank you for reaching out! Your email will be reviewed in a timely manner."

UPDATE 2: Read about the men who orchestrated this whole hoax here.