Tuesday, May 15th, 2012 | Thoughts

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Usage is like Oxygen

I’ve been working a lot on a side project of mine, DIYWOD.com. DIYWOD stands for Do It Yourself Workout of the Day. It’s a system designed to cater to garage gym Crossfitters or those on vacation. I had several ideas about what this service would look like going into it, and some of them have changed slightly, the process has been a little strange. There are some things I want for the site, but I’m learning that I have to accept that some of these ideas have to die. And there are some ideas that will be born out of feedback from the community. What I’ve learned is that I need to determine what to do, and launch it…get it out there so that it can live or die in usage, not in theory. I love this:

Usage is like oxygen for ideas. You can never fully anticipate how an audience is going to react to something you’ve created until it’s out there. That means every moment you’re working on something without it being in the public it’s actually dying, deprived of the oxygen of the real world.

Matt Mullenweg
Creator of WordPress
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Because I do so much custom development to solve a problem and create solutions, I rarely run into this phenomenon. It’s been a cool learning experience, and I have so much more of an appreciation for app developers.

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