Yesterday I wrote a piece that explained, among other things, that I see software as a performing art.#

This led Jhay Em Calderon to ask "why develop in an environment where [one of the platform vendors] will eventually shut you down for going over an unknown line?"#

The conversation was interesting, and ended with me saying I'm not worried about getting "shut down" by Zuck or Dick Costolo, because shipping software is only the visible part of what I'm doing. The important part is I'm (hopefully) getting a fan club together.#

I'm like a dancing bear in a circus. Twitter and Facebook have great tents. So I'll use them as long as they'll have me, and hopefully the fans will like what they get, and remember that if I have to go to another tent, or create my own.#

I think perhaps the tech industry may have matured to the point where they get that a guy like me isn't doing what their employees do. Analogously, the NBA employs a lot of people. They get paychecks year-in-year-out, while the players may only get a season or two in the league. There's more risk in what I do. And these days, the employees make more money. I think that's a bit out of balance, and that things will even out over time. #

Other people have said that Twitter is not a good bet, just look at their stock. But I am looking at their stock and that's why I feel especially comfortable with Twitter. They need new ideas. The market knows this. I believe the management knows this about the market, and may even feel they need new ideas from outside their company. #

In any case, that's one reason why it's good to have two legs, and I haven't forgotten that underneath it all is the web, which no one owns, and Linux and JavaScript, Node.js, cheap cloud servers, etc that make all this stuff possible today.#

I feel it's a good time to get in the sandbox and play a bit. And if it all blows up, well that's happened before. I don't like the feeling, but I'm still here. #

PS: It's worth pointing out that today's new release, thesaurus.land, relies on neither Twitter or Facebook. #

Update: Thanks to my friend Sarah Pressler for showing me that my outliner thesaurus wasn't just a toy. #

She said: "OMG will use this all day long. Generally use thesuarus.com but it's so cluttered that I cringe every time." I realized how right she was. That's why I didn't use thesaurus.com. I had forgotten!#

I also realized that with the cute name I gave it, it would never show up near the other thesauri on searches, so it would be much better to change the name now, at the beginning so it would be more visible and memorable. #

So that's why the name just changed to thesaurus.land. #