43 Things


43 Things was a social networking website established as an online goal setting community. It was built on the principles of tagging, rather than creating explicit interpersonal links. Users created accounts and then listed a number of goals or hopes; these goals were parsed by a lexer and connected to other people's goals that were constructed with similar words or ideas. This concept is also known as folksonomy. Users could set up to 43 goals, and were encouraged to explore the lists of other users and "cheer" them on towards achieving their goals.
The 43 Things website went offline on New Years Day, 2015. Another site using the same name appeared in 2017. This site agreed to post that they are unrelated to the original 43 Things, and subsequently shut the site down in July 2018.
visits the Robot Co-op in 2005

History

43 Things was launched on January 1, 2005, by the Robot Co-op, a small company based in Seattle founded by blogger and developer Buster Benson, Maktub keyboardist Daniel Spils, and former Amazon.com and Microsoft executive Josh Petersen. 43things.com became read-only on August 15, 2014, and shut down January 1, 2015. On April 2017, a copycat site launched. It has no connection to the original site, but copies the names and ideas of the original site. The copycat site changed its name to drimsa.com, but by the middle of 2018 it was defunct. By January 2019 the domain name 43things.com was owned by a domain name registrar, but it was not transferable.

Critique

According to "43 Things: A Community Study," 43 Things had two shortcomings: it failed to have a central area containing documentation about the website and it relied heavily upon RSS, which is unfamiliar to a large portion of users. Regardless, it received solid reviews in regards to responsiveness and user suggestion integration.

Awards

In 2005, 43 Things won the Webby Award for the best social networking site.