The Robot Co-op

We’re pleased to announce a new way to share your progress on 43 Things with the world. On every goal page, you’ll now see a set of buttons that enable you to share the goal with Facebook, Twitter, and a host of other social applications. We’re also experimenting with them on profile and entry pages, but they may come and go depending on usage and usability.

As one of the first “social networking” sites on the web, we feel strongly about the freedom that this medium gives our users to broadcast to the world their hopes and dreams, trials and tribulations. One of the founding tenets of 43 Things is that broadcasting to the world that you’re trying to accomplish a goal is one of the best ways to keep yourself accountable for completing it.

Using these buttons is optional, and your content always remains on 43 Things. The buttons simply post a link to 43 Things onto the social networking site of your choice. If someone else clicks one of the share buttons on content of yours, it’s posted to the other person’s social networking profile, not your own. In this way, if you choose not to use the share buttons, your 43 Things persona stays separate from your other online personas.

(If you’re really into sharing, did you know you can link your 43 Things account with Facebook? The settings are in: Your Account > Facebook Settings)

We used to have a water cooler problem, in that we didn’t have a water cooler. Now–like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice–we seem to be getting water delivered at an alarming rate!

We’re all for drinking more water, just not this much.

Have you heard about the future? Apparently, we aren’t going to need big, bulky computers or Tivo boxes anymore. It’s all going to “live in the cloud”.

I’m not sure I totally get it, but Ivan tells me it will be cheaper and easier and we are into both of those things. 43 Places already lives in the cloud. Today, we are tying All Consuming and Lists of Bests to some sort of virtual zeppelin and sending them off to “the cloud” as well.

If we’ve done it right, the sites should behave just as they did before. Of course, if we didn’t do it right, we’d appreciate you telling us about any problems. All Consuming and Lists of Bests will be unavailable starting around 2:30 pm Pacific time, and should return around 5:30 or 6 pm. 43 Things and 43 Places should be unaffected.

If this cloud stuff is something you want to know more about, here is a Wikipedia article about the topic. As always, thanks for caring!