Specific applications and platforms can have a short shelf life but really each application that is made can teach you things that can be used towards progressi

Specific applications and platforms can have a short shelf life but really each application that is made can teach you things that can be used towards progressing towards the long terms goals for your company or humanity. I'm developing a twitter application. Twitter might or might not be a fad. I can't see so far into the future and while my prognosticating skills are decent, I'm not 100% certain. Hell, I thought friendster was hot. Anyway by developing this one application, I am learning about social tools (which I've never done before), neural networks, semantic analysis, markov models and a hell of a lot of stats techniques I previously did not have a lot of usefulness to me. In the grander sense, I was more comfortable with deterministic techniques rather than probabilistic techniques. If Twitter goes down for good, I lose some time but I take that new knowledge and make the next app that gets me closer to my 20 year goal.