02 Jan 2005 | Jonathan M. Hollin said...

A 500 error is being generated on the 43 Things server atm!

02 Jan 2005 | paul haine said...

Could you please add padding: 0 to your body element? It's causing a minor display bug in Opera ( seen here).

03 Jan 2005 | Anonymous Coward said...

I must be dense. But I don't see the point. It seems like just another "must-see" destination that really just adds to the Internet noise out there.

03 Jan 2005 | Carl said...

I can't even get to this site. One Internal Server Error after another.

03 Jan 2005 | Darrel said...

I'm getting 500 server errors as well...

03 Jan 2005 | Randy said...

Good job, Robots! Site doesn't even work.

03 Jan 2005 | Jamie said...

The site is up. Help me achieve my worthy goal:
http://www.43things.com/people/view/asianmack

03 Jan 2005 | Ryan Mahoney said...

Hmm... a lot of 500 Server errors. Do you know the cause of this? Is there a load problem? Some server misconfiguration? Some error in programming or an error in the Rails platform itself?

This aspect of launching a web service is very interesting to me. Once you get everything straightened out, please let us know what happended!

03 Jan 2005 | Levi said...

Hmm... You've got to feel a bit sorry for the robots right now. Looks like the launch isn't going as smoothly as planned.

03 Jan 2005 | matthew said...

on the one hand, it is too bad the new site is going back and forth

on the other, have you tried downloading the windows ruby installer? --> http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=167 it's moving veeeery slow today (as if a LOT of people were downloading the file)

kinda ties it all together

03 Jan 2005 | matthew said...

on the one hand, it is too bad the new site is going back and forth

on the other, have you tried downloading the windows ruby installer? --> http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=167 it's moving veeeery slow today (as if a LOT of people were downloading the file)

kinda ties it all together

03 Jan 2005 | Brian Behrend said...

Not getting any errors but it does output some cruddy XHTML when you post to an external blog. It puts divs around everything, single quotes for attributes, no alt attribute on images, and it sends the actual Textile code instead of the HTML in some places.

It's early, I'm sure things will get better. It seems like a good idea so hopefully it improves.

03 Jan 2005 | Daniel Spils said...

We're working on those timeout errors, folks. Thanks for your patience. And the XHTML bug will be fixed. Us robots will make you proud in the end ;-)

03 Jan 2005 | seth said...

I like the overall idea (my list has 7 things so far) and I think I get the premise behind the whole thing...I just don't understand where the money starts coming in...call me a Capitalist Pig if you want.

Make something private a public & social experience, get a bunch of visitors, then ... profit?

But seriously, where's the explanation behind the whole thing? I'd be interested to hear a straight answer from the people behind the site.

I kind of see this whole thing as a new trend, as this weekend I discovered sites that aim to share bookmarks, photos, etc - then make that experience social.

I get the revenue model behind Flickr, I just don't get the payoff for other sites of this type. Maybe I'm just stupid.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

04 Jan 2005 | Josh Petersen said...

It should not be hard to figure out the business model. The site is advertising supported. We target ads based on people's goals. We get paid when people click on the ads. The goal is to produce a page for less than we make showing it to you. The difference in revenue minus the costs is the profit.

This is the same business model used by search engines (like Google) or information portals (like about.com) or community sites (like friendster). These sites give away a service and monetize traffic with ads.

Maybe you are trying too hard to figure it out! Take a look at a page like Visit Italy and I think you'll get it. We aren't trying to knock the ball out of the park. Just build a useful site that is fun and interesting. About.com is a top 100 website - and we think we can make something at least as useful with 43 things.

04 Jan 2005 | Jamie said...

Josh. Your ad sensing technology is top notch. No bullshit! Check out the ad served for my goal. Pretty amazing accuracy actually (totally serious, not joking).

http://43things.com/things/view/6210

04 Jan 2005 | Marco said...

Nice idea. Unfortunately I think there is no way to avoid duplicated/similar things... like visit New Zeland and Visit New Zeland... right?

04 Jan 2005 | Chris said...

Ah! So that's why there are Google ads on the SvN comment pages. (Especially good when blogging about web design, 'cos then you have adverts for potential competitors.)

04 Jan 2005 | Josh Petersen said...

Jamie - I liked the ad on your goal here even better
http://43things.com/things/view/8882

Marco - that lone Visit New Zealand looks like a remnant from an earlier bug. Thanks for catching it. Goals that differ only by capitalization and punctuation should now be the same.

04 Jan 2005 | Jamie said...

Josh. That is brilliant. I'll click on it now just for you!

04 Jan 2005 | ak said...

now if someone can link 43things and flickr together we can get a "pictures of me working towards my goal". Now you get a sense that people are actually doing what they said.

04 Jan 2005 | seth said...

Josh,

I was thinking there was more to it besides the ads. I guess just consider me skeptical of advertising as a business model on the web. I've seen it fail all too often - Really, how many companies are doing exceptionally well only off ads? I'm not sure, but I'd be willing to bet the number is low (companies like Google being the exception to the rule).

Not knocking your service, because I think it's novel and I'm using it. I guess mine is more of a concern of the business model as a whole...or maybe I'm just pissed I didn't think of it! :)

Anyone have information about how profitable ventures similar to this one are?

04 Jan 2005 | JF said...

Anyone have information about how profitable ventures similar to this one are?

Often times companies don't go out of biz cause they can't pull in enough revenue, but rather because their costs are too high. It's really easy to be profitable if you keep your costs in check.

05 Jan 2005 | Adam Michela said...

Often times companies don't go out of biz cause they can't pull in enough revenue, but rather because their costs are too high. It's really easy to be profitable if you keep your costs in check.

Werd.

I would bet 43things, if it stays at its current activity rate, can clear 15-20K/mo MINIMUM with advertising.

Not a fortune, but if they keep it up, it could be.

If they keep their costs down, it will be.

07 Jan 2005 | cs said...

Great work guys, really cool idea! I'm just curious about the ads. They look like Google's Adsense, but they don't look like Adsense. How did you do this, get them separated into divs like that?