The Robot Co-op

We are rapidly coming up on the 5th anniversary of 43 Things’ appearance on the interweb. When we were first getting started, way back in 2004, we decided to put out a “primitive” version of the site. We code-named this experiment “Twinkler”.

“Twinkler” was a very basic version of 43 Things. This site let you make a list of your goals and told you how many people had the same goal in common. The site didn’t have accounts, reminders, entries, images, profile pages, search results, or any of the things you might expect a site like 43Things.com to have. What it did have was a big provocative question: “What do you want to do with your life?“

Within 43 days, more than 200,000 people had made a list of their goals on “Twinkler” and we knew we had an idea that was resonating with people all around the world. Five years later, over 2 million more people have used 43 Things to make a life list, a list of the goals they want to accomplish most. Since then, we’ve met users of 43 Things from all over the world, put out a book of goals submitted by users of 43 Things, and seen the site make differences in people’s live we never could have imagined 5 years ago.

To commemorate the last 5 years, we are bringing the simplicity of that first version of 43 Things to our site’s homepage for a few months while we celebrate our anniversary. At the end of the week you’ll see the homepage direct some attention on the question “What do you want to do in 2010?” We hope you enjoy our tribute to our humble beginnings as we re-connect with our past and we hope you’ll think about what you want out of the next year, as we celebrate 5 years of 43 Things.

Sorry for the slip up that led to a dust up but now it’s all fixed up. We were working on a new project (more on that in the next post) and we accidentally stepped on the “I’ve given up” tab.

We know folks keep track of given up goals for all kinds of reasons. Be assured, your given up goals never disappeared – just the tab that let you see them went missing. Now the tab is back, and you’ll be wondering, “How can 1 calorie taste so good?”

The Tab is back!

We try and keep our loyal readers abreast of what’s happening at the Co-op in our ongoing efforts to speed up the sites and make things easier to use and maintain. Today’s announcement concerns a test drive of a new navigation bar (navbar) we are working on. The new navbar is faster loading, less tall, and we think, a bit easier on the eyes. In terms of functionality, it is all the same, this is mostly about how it looks and the performance when you request a page. Because the navbar is such a focal part of the page, this test is one you will almost certainly notice.

In our ongoing efforts to lose a few pounds . . .

We also wanted to tell you a bit more about the experiment, as it could prove a bit confusing as well. We’ll be introducing the new navbar through what is known as an A/B test. Half of the 43Things users will see the new navbar and the other half will see the same navbar we’ve been using for the last 9 months. This lets us measure the performance of each treatment and analyze the resorts accordingly. It also means you and a friend might not be seeing the same navbar at all. Or if you use one computer at work and another at home, the navbars you see may vary.

Thanks, in general, for being a part of the grand experiment that is 43 Things, and thanks specifically for bearing with us while we take the new navbar out for a spin.

Hold on to your hats folks. In our ongoing efforts to speed up the sites and simplify their operation we are “refactoring” a few things on the site related to goal adoption and goal counts (how many people are on a goal). Now if all goes smoothly, the net effect will be everything will function just as they did before, but with faster loading pages and less strain on the database. That ought to mean fewer “oops” pages. The change will be most evident on goals with lots of people and teams with lots of members.

Sounds great, right? So why the fuss? Well, because we are pretty much rerouting the oxygen intake for our dear 43Things the site (goal adoption) . We’ve tested the changes, double checked them, and we are feeling ready to roll them out. But if you see something go haywire in these 2 areas we’d love it if you let us know.

We are going to take all the sites down tonight at 10 pm Pacific time to do some database maintenance. We are sorry for the inconvenience and apologize for not giving you more advance notice. The upshot of all this is that 43Things should be faster when we come back online 1 hour later.