Sayonara nakata.net, and...2009.05.21

Born on 21st of May 1998, nakata.net is 11 years old today.
Since that time I retired from professional football, travelled the world, and then this year became the chairman of the board of trustees for a trust fund.

As you all know, I started nakata.net, my homepage, as a way to fulfill my desire for “a way to communicate my thoughts directly to everyone”.

nakata.net was created as the easiest medium for me, as a professional soccer player, to communicate with the public.

However these days, as a traveller; chairman of the board; executive officer for Tohato; advisory board member for the Ministry for the Environment; and so on, I have become rather multi-faceted, and the content of what I want to communicate to everyone has also changed greatly.

In amidst all this, I began to feel that the time may have come for nakata.net, which was built based around my being a professional footballer, to take the next step by taking on a new shape. After pondering it for a year or so I made the decision to dramatically change the shape of nakata.net.

When nakata.net started up in '98, the availability of the internet itself was very limited. And while blogs are just standard today, back then, for an individual to use the internet to distribute information to the public in any way was almost unheard of. But that environment has changed an astonishing amount over this decade. The world is saturated with information - it's everywhere, almost like air, from TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, the internet and more.

It seems to rain down upon you, whether you need it or not... Even if the information is irrelevant or useless to you... Because of this, it becomes difficult to differentiate what information is true, and what information is important to you.

Furthermore, the majority of the information out there is completely one-way, and hardly any of it inspires the receiver to take any action as a result of having digested that information.

What I thought, amidst this storm of information, was that there's a need for information that actually makes its receivers want to take action - take the next step - based on that information. In other words, I wanted to transmit the kind of information that could be an opportunity or a “spark”. In today's society, I think there is so much information floating around that it can very often be overwhelming - it can be hard to know what to do. That's where the new nakata.net comes in. I'm hoping it will act as a pre-selector or an index of information for you - I think this is an interesting idea. So that you might come to think “When in doubt, check nakata.net!!”...

The nakata.net up until now featured me centre-stage, and all the information related to me. But from now on I will take on an editorial role, as an overall producer, and the information will not be limited to things relating directly to me - I also want to put info out there about things I have encountered - “why not give this a go?” type of info.

I have realised there are so many wonderful things in the world, including in Japan, to be discovered. I want to put information out there that will be a bonus for the receiver, and do a little good for the world too at the same time...

I have never produced a magazine or done anything like that before so this will be a real trial and error process for me. To be honest I am a bit uncertain about how and where this is going to go. But I am just as much excited and full of anticipation.

I want the new nakata.net to be much more two-way, much more interactive than it has been to date, so I look forward to seeing the participation of many more people.

And finally, I'd like to thank all those of you who shared the last decade-and-a-bit on nakata.net with me. Thank you so much.

I hope you, too, have high expectations of the new nakata.net, setting off on a new journey as a “Social Entertainment Magazine”.

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