43 Things is a place where people set goals and connect with others who are trying to achieve the same thing. Even if you’re not setting goals yourself, it’s still interesting and often amusing to see what others have set out to do e.g. go skinny dipping, have a one night stand, and be myself.

Let’s take a look at all-time most popular goals:

All-Time Most Popular Goals

1. lose weight 30680 people
2. stop procrastinating 22676 people
3. Fall in love 20614 people
4. write a book 20566 people
5. be happy 18362 people
6. Get a tattoo 16691 people
7. go on a road trip with no predetermined destination 15744 people
8. drink more water 15738 people
9. travel the world 14880 people
10. get married 14848 people

Summary: I wanna lose weight, stop losing time, so that I could easily find the one I love and get lost together in the world with his/her name tattooed on my chest, then get married and write a book about my happy life. So miserable and disgusting, isn’t it?

How could someone explain the 15738 people of 8? Is it due to the rising Internet penetration in Africa or to the raising of ecological consciousness in the developing/ed countries?

Popularity: 28% [?]

Click on the image to see how Nexus visualizes my Facebook friends network in a single undirected graph. Every dot is a contact and the lines represent the connections between them. The formulated clusters correspond to neighborhoods of people that (seem to) connect with each other. The real Nexus graph provides a high degree of interaction. It’s rather impressive to click, watch and recall when and under what specific circumstances I’ve met all these people.

From things like this, a key technique in modern sociology, information science, economics, and biology has emerged: Social Network Analysis. Yet another Big Brother tool some people would argue.

Popularity: 34% [?]

Facebook Lexicon counts occurrences of words and phrases on Walls over time. Playing around with it, I found this rather hypocritic of people, if not downright amusing.

Popularity: 26% [?]