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, founding developer of WordPress, in 1.0 Is The Loneliest Number
Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of WordPress, in 1.0 Is The Loneliest Number
David O.
on 12 Nov 10I agree to a degree. I’m working on an drum machine app for iphone and android and I have to use discretion to determine when will be the best time to release full details of the project. Something half baked with very poor design/functionality can lead to a bad first impression.
Joe
on 12 Nov 10Well, sure, an idea requires usage to grow properly. But having an idea and implementing it today vs a month from today makes little difference (yes, of course there are exceptions to this).
It’s building up the idea that really suffers without feedback since you invest time, not the idea itself.
Interesting analogy though.
Joe
on 12 Nov 10Oops, missing a </b> up there.
(That’s what I get for not previewing first!)
JZ
on 12 Nov 10Fixed, Joe.
David O.
on 12 Nov 10Even a secretive company like Apple can’t hold on to an idea for too long or they will risk obsolescence. When they release the first iphone it wasn’t awesome like the current version but they iterated year after year. On the flip side they held on to the tablet idea until the time was right.
(side note, typo in first comment should have typed “a” drum machine instead of “an”)
Hrishi
on 15 Nov 10I agree completely. We did not release how smallest things matter so much to the end user until we released 39Shops to the public. User came up with very simple requests which would take minutes to implement. Certain aspects of an app are only visible when they are used by the people for whom the app is designed to be consumed. It is like a lotus which would bloom only in full sunlight.
pht
on 15 Nov 10At which point does it become contradictory with “don’t ship shit” and “don’t rip-off your faithful users by artificially obsoleting your products ?”
This discussion is closed.