New Features at 43 Things
By leelefever on February 17, 2005 - 3:06pm.
The folks at the Robot Co-op have added some cool new features to 43 Things.
The site has a new "Cities" resource that enables you to see more localized goals. For instance, the most popular goal in Austin Texas is "Go Kayaking".
"Cheers" are a way for people to "...support people and their goals by cheering them on." This means you click a link associated with a goal on a person's profile page. This is interesting to me. I would have thought that cheers might be entry-specific instead of goal-specific.
Let's say I had a goal on the site and someone came along and contributed something useful to the goal, I'd want to be able to recognize them with a cheer. This way, the system gives people an incentive for contributing useful info to a goal.
As peoples' contributions get "cheers" the cheers could be like a reputation that goes with them across the site, setting up a way to see the "Most Cheered" people. Further, it enables me to see the entries in a goal with the most cheers- giving me some idea of the useful entries among many.
As it is now, I'm not sure what the incentive is to give cheers to goals, but I've only been looking at it for a bit.
A new feature I think is really useful is...
I Want To Help Others Do This! Select the “help others†option when completing a goal and you’ll become a resource for those in need. Stuck on the progress of a goal or just looking for a little advice? You can now submit a plea for help that gets sent directly to the people who are interested in helping.
It's great to see this system being successful. Have you ever noticed the frequency of new entries? It's consistently an entry every few minutes. If anything can be taken from pure volume, it's awesome.
New Features at 43 Things
Hi Lee,
Just a quick comment from "Good Morning Silicon Valley" -- 43 Things is owned and mined by Amazon. See Other Businesses under 43 things Privacy Policy section on Does 43 Things Share the Information It Receives? (Answer: YES!)
Here is the link to the column which exposed it...
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/columnists/gmsv/...
Not knocking the site at all because it is very very cutting edge community wise, but members should know who is actually behind this and who will use their information.
Regards,
Mike
New Features at 43 Things
I think these articles are a bit alarmist. It reminds me of what Gmail was released and people thought that Big Brother in the form of Google was watching their email content.
Carrick has somethings to say about 43 Things recently that I agree with.
I think they could have been more forthcoming, yes. But virtually everything the user puts into the system is public. It's not like 43 Things is offering a "private journal" where users think they have privacy but don't. The information is put into the public domain for use by whomever.
If Amazon wanted to mine a site like that, they wouldn't have to own it- it's all there to see.
New Features at 43 Things
Not trying to be alarmist by any means. (Maybe the author is trying to gain some attention for his column??) Only point that I wanted to make is that for all the atruistic spirit, this will boil down to a money making venture at some point. That's a good thing in the long run as it may help the site survive.
Will amazon really want to know that much about me as an individual? I seriously doubt it. But it will benefit from trends identified by analyzing the content and applying them to its business model and perhaps incorporate it into it personalization efforts. And that really wouldn't be too bad would it?
I just think that 43Things should be a lot more honest about how the information is used...
Mike
New Features at 43 Things
Interesting discussion, you two. It sounds to me like part of the bigger user experience question is what is the implicit assumption about how information contributed to an onine community will be used?
It strikes me that there's something fundamental to web sites users understand as communities that creates a sense of enclosure and privacy. By acting as a community member, we feel our activity is part of a closed circle. Very different than activity on commercial or informational site, where the audience is understood to be general.
I'll go out on a limb: I think privacy and trust are going to become the fundamental underlying issue for participation in online communities. Lee, I'd love to hear your reaction to that.
New Features at 43 Things
Mike,
No reflection on you man, I mean the authors of the articles may be alarminst.
Ryan,
Trust is key for sure- a fundamental element. I think what you're referring to is usually more explicit than implicit. Most community sites have a terms of service and/or privacy policy that governs what the foundation of trust is built upon. Members are not usually left to wonder about the policies and shouldn't have to.
However, the paragraph above is about trust in the system and not interpersonal trust. Interpersonal trust can't codified in an "agreement", it has to be developed and I think that is what really can make a community work.
With 43 Things, I don't think trust in the system or interpersonal trust are huge factors so far. I don't think members are concerned about the privacy of what they post- posts to 43 Things come up on Google searches. Plus, it's much more about goals than relationships, which is a real differentiator in my eyes from most communities.
But, if the site diverges from the stated policies, they are breaking laws and losing trust from the users in one fell swoop.
I'm rambling...
New Features at 43 Things
Thanks for your discussion about the new features, Lee.
About the whole funding thing, we've tried to be open as is reasonable on our blog. Some companies might like to make a big deal about their funding. For us, we thought it mattered far more to talk about the product we were building. Was it a mistake not to air the investment in public prior to a reporter asking us about it? I'm not sure. I think making our own big announcement might have sent just as wrong a message as having people write crazy conspiracy theories. No doubt we wont win any PR awards for how we handled it, but you know, we aren't actually trying to win any PR awards. That's why we let journalists talk directly to our developers (though they aren't too keen on doing that again).
We certainly took the risk of letting someone else shape this story by not making our own announcement. The particular article that was mentioned makes it out like our project is some sort of front or sham. The author never spoke to us our made any sort of inquiry. Is that what you expect from a journalist? It is a bit crazy to me - especially when I think about the day back in the summer when I tried to explain our idea for 43 Things to my neighbor Lee LeFever - who I'd met on Orkut, by the way. Back then, I was just quitting my job and trying to get it all off the ground. Any funding was still a good ways off and we were jumping into the great unknown. You'd never know any of this from reading that article or hearing the conspiracy theory descriptions.
The investment doesn't change any of our operating procedures or any of our policies. As mentioned, the goals and entries people add to the site are all out on the open internet. It was up to bloggers factchecking the press to point out these simple points.
I do really agree with the points about trust. No one has to use 43 Things and no one will if it isn't fun, useful, and if they don't feel like they are treated well. One of the reasons we were happy about working with Amazon is that they have a real dedication to creating a good customer experience and they consistently earn high marks for customer satisfaction.
Lets be honest, the whole idea behind 43 Things isn't for everybody. People with high privacy concerns probably shouldn't publicize their goals on the internet. It just doesn't make sense. We also made it really easy to close your account and delete all your entries if you change your mind about using the site. We blog about what we are building and how we are building it because we think it's useful to learn from customers and share ideas about the site. We have nothing to gain by treating people poorly. That's no way to build a community - online or off.
New Features at 43 Things
Josh:
I dont' personally have an issue with the way 43 Things is set up, but I also wasn't really thinking about what would happen to my goals and comments after I posted them. I was surprised the first time I Googled myself and found my aspiration there for everyone to read. Probably would have chosen something other than my full name if I'd been thinking it through.
But I can live with the publicness of it. Now the world knows I want to be better organized, write a blog, have 'dates' with my spouse and go to Iceland someday. Who knows, maybe an Icelandic philanthropist will find my posting and make my dream come true!
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