Several people have asked me where I’ve been lately – cause I haven’t been blogging much at all. The answer is I partly went dark.
If you don’t know what ‘going dark’ is, it’s when a programmer/entrepreneur or other type essentially disappears from the ‘grid’, the grid being basically any type of communication (IM, blogs, cell phones, other communication tools) and doesn’t make any personal appearances either. I’ve only partly gone dark because I’m still responding to incoming communication but not initiating any outgoing. This is a somewhat socially dangerous thing to do and it’s usually only done for one reason – to build something new – and that’s what I’m doing.
In The Dip, Seth Godin says that the most effective way to get through a big Dip is to change it – change the rules, change the expectations, change how it has to be done. I believe going dark is one way to do that. It allows one to focus very intently on a goal, to become single minded and to make stuff happen very quickly. In the last week, Ryan Hansen (my business partner) and I have built an entirely new technology – one that I think will knock your socks off. The Dip we are facing involves a lot of huge issues and honestly, I think most people would shy away from trying to do it because of the sheer magnitude of work involved. Which is exactly why tackling this Dip and getting to the other side of it is going to be valuable.
The new technology we’ve built is called The Daily Spike. I’m not going to go into details about it just yet, but I will say that as far as I’m aware, The Daily Spike offers something that’s NEVER been offered for the blogosphere before and provides a wealth of information that finally makes the blogosphere managable and a pleasant experience. In less than a week, I’ll let YOU be the judge of that. I’ve let a couple people take a look at The Daily Spike and they’ve been amazed (blown away?) by the capabilities it provides – I know that I’m personally blown away by it when I’m playing around with it.
I have to give appreciation to Jeff Barson, whom I was talking to a week and a half ago about my business (TagJungle) and he said “You need to get The Daily Spike DONE and OUT there because hundreds of thousands or more people are going to want subscribe to this and that’s what you need to get to the next level”. Jeff’s a smart dude and when he looks through a pile of stuff you’re thinking about and picks one out as a potential gem, you should listen (I do).
We’re not abandoning TagJungle – not by any means – The Daily Spike could only happen, and be built this quickly, because of TagJungle – or more specifically because of The Jungle Engine, the engine that processes the blogosphere and organizes it. We’re building several enhancements to The Jungle Engine for The Daily Spike that will only help improve TagJungle.
So, to bring this around, on the advice of a really smart guy, I’ve gone mostly Dark in the last week or so in order to get through a huge Dip. I hope that by making it through this Dip, The Daily Spike will be able to enrich YOU and your life, make you more aware of what’s going on in the world, and make gathering information MUCH easier for you.
