Help test 43people.com: the next new thing from The Robot Co-op

We just released a pretty big update to the new site. Take a look at “tag browsing” from the Hasselhoff page. Click on a tag and refine away. There are also some fixes to profile images. Also, the beginnings of “claim this page” have been put into place.

What is left? Some improvements to the way “contact” this person works, a way to let you meet, describe and tag yourself, web services to get all your data back as xml, and a little game we code named Bozzio. We also basically opened the site up to everybody. Launch or lurch, you decide.

Let us know what you think needs to be done in the next couple weeks. All the robots are getting ready for vacation (Todd to Europe, Bob to Europe, Eric to California, Ivan to hang out with his Slovakian relatives).

Early on when we started brainstorming the idea for 43 Things we came up with the triumvirate of 43: people, places, & things. We decided to start with 43 Things as it was the most unique and out there part of the trio. We were fascinated with the way identity is constructed by our desires – the things we want to do, places we want to go, and the people we want to meet. From the time it launched, the number 1 request has been to add a “friends list”, followed closely by a way to privately contact other users. 43People finishes off the initial trio and adds these requested features.

We put off 43 People to the end because we wanted to make sure it did something different from all the other social networking sites. So rather than focus on replicating your existing social network, we put the focus on your aspirations (who you want to meet). On top of that (literally) we put the ways your goals and your travels connect you to people (whether you know them or not). Lastly we added ways to privately communicate with a person without revealing your address if you don’t want to, and ways to keep track of people you are interested in.

With most of the sites we’ve released this year, we get to about the 80% point before we invite in users to test the site. With 43People, we decided to open it up closer to the 20% point.

All the robots appreciate your help in making 43People useful, but we also realize that the site won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. We do want to make it fun, safe, and interesting – and if you have ideas as to how we can do that – please let us know.