Hopefully history will remember us similarly to Newton & Leibniz and the invention of the calculus. OK, I guess that is not really likely.
When this question comes up I usually do 3 things:- I point out that they are different sites and yes, it is a funny coincidence.
- I tell people we sent mail to Merlin to commiserate over the weirdness and promise to be good neighbors in the 43 neighborhood (loan a cup of sugar, put a link to 43 folders on our site if desired, etc). We love 43 folders and want everyone to get more productive and use apple products. We are serious. Some see God’s hand in all this.
- Lastly, when someone gets hostile about the coincidence (as a few excited meme detectives have) I point out that we registered the 43things1 domain before 43folders2 existed. In no way do I imagine Merlin knew of our plans, just as we didn’t know of his.
In fact, the coincidences continue because 43 Things was also inspired to some degree by Dave Allen – but the idea for 43 only entered on a subliminal level. We considered 23 and 37 as well as well as 43 – we just wanted a prime number less than 50, and settled on 43 as the right number of things to try and do.
We registered the url and set to work building out our company with no idea of any 43 meme. Anyway, if 43 ends up meaning smart, fun and useful – like 411 means info – maybe it will all work out for the best.
1 Domain Name: 43THINGS.COM
Creation Date: 06-Apr-2004
2 Domain Name: 43FOLDERS.COM
Creation Date: 31-aug-2004
