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.
The Robot Co-op 
Happy 5th anniversary!
I looove it that you’re doing the “what do you want to do with your life?” question again. And I love the 2010 tab!
Great! I love this feature. It is a very good way to keep an eye on those goals than can be done by the end of next year.
After all, time framing is essential to achieve our goals. I have found myself committing to achieve 14 goals out of my 43!
Happy 5th anniversary from me, too! 🙂
So, as a few of us have been wondering, what happens with the 2010 tab once the New Year has started?
Does it stay for a while, or merge with the main list (uh-oh, mine is already full)?
Congratulations!
I found this site last year when I had a pressing challenge ahead of me. Today I felt as though I’d achieved my goal so I came back in to close that one off.
Thanks guys for making this site available.
Linden
Happy 5th birthday!
Happy 5th anniversary Josh and team!
What a great accomplishment.
eytan
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Happy 5th birthday from me, too!
I also have a question about the 2010 resolutions: Will there be an option to write entries about our resolutions at some point? It’s a little irksome to want to talk about my progress/plans for my resolutions, but not to be able to do it without adding them to my main list.
And what’s the thinking behind not letting us see who shares our resolutions? (I’d think it was for privacy, except that we can see people’s resolutions from their main account pages, sooo … I just don’t get it.)
@Crystal:
We’re not planning to let you write entries about resolutions. We intended the resolutions to be really quick and focused, so we left out a lot of regular goal features. As you’ve noticed, you’re welcomed (encouraged!) to add them to your list.
@Linnea:
The 2010 resolution tab will be there for most of 2010. We’re probably going to do something similar in 2011, so around the end of the year we’ll roll out the 2011 feature.
That’s a long way away, so we’re not sure if we’re going to roll over resolutions, etc., but if there’s something you really care about, you might want to also add it to your regular goal list.