Best Practices · Concepts
43things.com: Let Me Count the Ways

43things.com is a site well worth exploring — not only for its own usefulness, but also for inspiration from its implementation of truly collaborative and socially interactive content-creation. This is one of the most interesting sites I've seen in a long while.

The main function of 43things.com is to allow you to create an agenda of "to do" items or goals. You can use your list of "43 things" (though there's actually no limit) however you want, for items from the sublime to the ridiculous, from the short- to the long-term, from simple tasks to life-long objectives.

It gets interesting, though, when the social interaction kicks in — because there are a huge number of ways you can interact with others:

  1. you can view anyone's list
  2. you can comment on any item on anyone's list (or indeed on anyone's comments)
  3. you can give them a "cheer" to encourage them in their pursuit of a particular goal
  4. you can share a common goal with any number of people
  5. you can form "teams" to complete a particular goal
  6. you can invite (by email) anyone to take on any task, themselves or as a team with you
  7. you can tag your own or anyone else's goals to identify subjects or themes
  8. you can show that you've completed any of your own or anyone else's goals
  9. you can mark any completed item as "worth doing" or "not worth doing"
  10. you can offer to help anyone with any goal you've completed
  11. and you can ask for help or advice from those who've offered
But then keep going: add on top of all these collaborative features that you can display your Flickr-hosted photos, and also link from any tag to Flickr or del.icio.us tags, and subscribe to almost any page by RSS — and this site is an almost endless web of social and semantic rabbit trails. May I recommend my own page for starters?

I'm pleased to see that quite a bit of what I like most about 43things are things we're already implementing for InterVarsity's Ministry Exchange or MX [now live (as of May 2005)]. We're not doing interdependent tags, though. (User's can create "labels," but they don't tie in to other users' labels, even if they are identical.) Should we? But the basic sharing core is something we're nailing, too. (For an introduction to the MX's features, IVCF staff can download an MX Overview.)

In short, 43things.com makes me hungrier than ever for the impending launch of our own Ministry Exchange!

(Thanks to Brad for the initial recommendation.)

Posted by Jon on March 28, 2005 11:58 AM
Comments

Very cool site. My username is NathanL and Kelli's is Kelli. How did you and Ann combine your goals, or "work on this together," or whatever that wording was?

Posted by: Nathan at March 30, 2005 11:13 AM

You have to send an invitation for a specific task -- using the "Invite people to do this goal" link in the right nav -- and then be sure to check the box for "Invite to do this with you as a team." Once they accept, you're all set.

Posted by: Jon at March 30, 2005 11:32 AM