In his characteristically subtle way, Why dropped a reference to a new web site called 43 Things. When I say “new”, I of course mean it’s new to me (as it appears that the domain name was registered back in April 2004).

43 Things is one of a number of social networking sites (like del.icio.us) that have been quietly popping up over the last few years. The idea with 43 Things is that you make a list of goals, things that you’d like to do, and then chart your progress towards those goals. At the same time, you’re sharing your goals with others and perhaps finding that you have goals in common with other users in the 43 Things community. Given the time of year, it seems like recording my New Year’s Resolutions might provide a good excuse for playing around with this site for awhile.

As an aside, it was interesting to note that on the 43 Things Zeitgeist, two of the top ten “World’s Most Popular Goals” are Ruby-related: Learn Ruby, currently at number 3, and Write an Application on Rails, currently at number 7.