There have been a lot of little "hot" startups or online projects lately that have a ton of buzz. Offerings like Flickr, del.icio.us, Furl, Bloglines and others seem to be what everyone has been talking about. In cases like Bloglines and Furl, the companies have quickly been snapped up by larger players, and there are plenty of rumors about others (such as the popular rumor that Flickr is being acquired by Yahoo). However, one of these offerings that has been getting some attention lately is a project called "43 Things" which is sort of like a modification on typical social networking offerings. Instead of just linking to people you know, the site asks you to describe things you want to do in your life, and then (via "tags" -- which most people probably remember as "keywords" but tags is apparently much more hip these days) shows you everyone else who wants to do the same thing. Think of it as courage through social networking peer pressure. Well, rather than it just being a fun little startup getting lots of buzz, it might just be a marketing ploy to eventually drive you to Amazon.com. Salon.com is breaking the story that, rather than being "acquired," it looks like 43 Things has really been a project stealthily built by Amazon all along. There seems to be a bit of confusion over the matter, and some insistence that the company is really separate, with Amazon just being the sole investor. Either way, it shows how companies like Amazon are looking to these hot startups as a sort of stealth marketing technique, building up buzz around a cool service, and then (eventually) trying to drive that traffic back to their own site.