43 Things Amazon Doesn’t Want You to Know
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Written By Reprise Media | February 9, 2005 | Share This
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When 43 Things appeared on the scene, a lot of people thought it was a cool mod on the social networking concept and got on board. If you’ve never been there, the site basically asks you to list some things you want to do (or have been meaning to do) and then assigns tags to […]
When 43 Things appeared on the scene, a lot of people thought it was a cool mod on the social networking concept and got on board. If you’ve never been there, the site basically asks you to list some things you want to do (or have been meaning to do) and then assigns tags to those items, linking them with others who want to do the same thing. It’s like peer pressure, but in a more positive way.
Techdirt points to a story in Salon that speculates on whether the hot little startup is actually a promo device set up by Amazon.com.
Amazon has been recently revealed as the primary backer of 43 Things, despite ‘Chief Janitorial Officer’ Erik Benson’s claims that this startup is legit, “”We’re working in a small office in Capitol Hill above a yoga studio, use our own Powerbooks at work, have our own hosting and dreamed up this project and company 100%.”
Let’s hope so, though it seems a little too convenient that a site which encourages people to pour out their dreams and aspirations also happens to be backed by one of the biggest sellers of self-help books.
Topics: Advertising: Behavioral, Advertising: Contextual, Investment, M&A, Search: Innovations |
43er Josh Peterson’s 12/11/04 e-mail to me may be a clue re: 43 & Amazon’s plans. Here is Josh’s e-mail:"I just spent about an hour surfing around [my MSFT-/VC-approved business plan for a provider of customized lifelong learning and career services (CLLCS)] with a bit of amazement. I run a little company…We are a team of folks who worked together at Amazon.com developing that company’s personalization and recommendations team and systems. We spent about 1.5 years thinking about what we wanted to build next. We thought a lot about online education tools. We thought a lot about classified ads and job networks. We thought a lot about reputation systems. We thought a bit about personalized advertising systems. We thought a lot about blogging and social networking systems. Eventually, we came up with the idea behind 43 Things….I guess I’m mostly just fascinated that we’ve been working a very similar vein to the one you describe, without having a solid name for it (we call it ‘the age of the amateur’ or ‘networks of shared experiences’ instead of CLLCS, but believe me, we are talking about the same patterns and markets, if not in exactly the same way). Thanks for sharing what you have - its fascinating stuff."—-CLLCS details coming online at OpportuniTV.com.Feel free to contact me with any questions, etc.Enjoy,Frank Ruscica