43 People feedback: let me cheer everything

So I've been playing with 43 People. It's the latest in the Robots' evil plan in building their 43 universe, along side 43 Things and 43 Places (sorry, 43 Thongs is already taken).

People isn't sure what it wants to be when it grows up, and reactions have been mixed. When our office first got access (it's *sort of* invite only, in that you need to have a 43 Things and/or Places account, and then if someone links to you, you magically can get in), we spent the day (days?) madly adding people we had met or wanted to meet...and then we were done. That's sort of the main thing you can do -- make lists of people you've met, and people you want to meet. Yes, it's a social networking app, but like I said, 43 people doesn't know exactly what it's going to become, I think, which is a similar feeling that Flickr had in the early days.

But I keep coming back, heading straight in to "Hasselhoff" - a sort of dashboard of the latest connections, photos, comments and stories that people have made. Stories are fantastic, and somehow everyone has adopted a very similar tone of righting, that somehow comes from being involved in th 43 universe.

And the other part I check out is my subscriptions. These are all the people I am connected to, and all the content they are generating across 43 Things, Places, and People. And, it lets me "cheer" any content that lives in that context. But, even more importantly, the Robots have invited the rest of the Internet to come and live in their 43 universe: Flickr accounts are tied in automatically, plus you can add any RSS feed that represents that person.

So, this "river of news" style page mixes in all the micro-content you could wish for, for all your people -- from your Netflix account feed to your Upcoming.org calendar, even so far as the items you're checking out from the Seattle Public Library. I would probably drown under the amount of information flowing through there, but being able to (serendipitously) find out that Eric Rice took a really cool picture of a cat is...great. It makes the world a smaller, more connected place.

And now, let me circle back around to the feedback part. The 43 universe has cheers. It can represent many things in different contexts, but often it's an easy way to say "this is cool", without having to leave a comment. It's a light touch to let other people know that you're hanging out, see what they're doing, and that you dig it/think it's cool.

But I want to "cheers" everything. And I think maybe the Robots and 43 People can let me do that.

So, here's my virtual cheers until such functionality gets built. Erik, this is a great post:

What if ideas are like species in our head. Thinking an idea (or using an idea) (or otherwise incarnating the idea) is like a little animal living its life in the ecosystem of your head.
Erik Benson: the ecosystem of our brain

Now everyone should go off and read the full entry. It's the same sort of thing that lives off in a corner of MY brain, too. No, not you Robots -- back to work! We need cheers everywhere.