43Places.com - The Myspace of Travel?

Here’s a travel-oriented social tagging site to add to your list. 43 Places is a new spin on the popular community-driven website 43 Things — instead of revolving around things to accomplish, it’s all about places to go. The places are added by users; they can be as mundane as the local pub or a vast as Russia.

On the small side of things, the site verges into Yelp territory, with users shouting out for their favorite local establishments. Unfortunately, the simplistic interface and lack of a nuanced rating system (you can rate a place, but the only options are “worth it” or “not worth it”) conspire to keep 43 Places away from being a truly useful tool in this category.

What makes 43 Places shine is how it can, like 43 Things, bring people together based on common dreams. And not only can you find people who also dream of travelling to, say, Iceland; you can read comments from people who’ve been there already. And see pictures. (43 Places can automatically draw from photos on Flickr, in addition to user uploads.) In short, it makes a pretty handy tool for brainstorming new trips.

As a special bonus for those of us who take secret pleasure in watching the pages of our passports fill with inscrutable markings, there’s a cool zoomable map on your profile page that shows everyone where you’ve been. And since it’s generated automatically, you don’t need to feel like a putz.