I currently follow 840 people on Twitter. I have steadily increased my following count over the past year and have noticed that it has drastically changed the way I use Twitter. The biggest change I have noticed is the rate at which I share. After I crossed the 600 following count, my sharing dropped.
I could not figure out why. I was still using Twitter just as much as before and it started to make me think about why we share our thoughts on Twitter. I recently read Nick Bilton’s Hatching Twitter after having these thoughts and his anecdotes concerning the early days of Twitter helped me realize why my sharing had fallen.
Jack Dorsey’s vision of Twitter was for the user to share what was happening to her/him. As the product began to evolve, Evan Williams and others understood that its potential was not just in what was happening to you but also the world around you. Twitter’s potential was to be the most up to date and informative news source in the world.
I have never watched news on TV and don’t plan on starting. Twitter will always be there if I want to catch up on the world. This was the reason my sharing declined. I shared on Twitter because I obviously wanted to let people know about interesting articles that I have read. I wanted to share my thoughts on what was going on in the world. As I started to follow more people, 99% of the content that I would have shared was already tweeted multiple times. Therefore, I would only share a specific article when I had a unique take on the topic.
I have considered cutting down on my following count but ultimately I decided that the information I am able to take in from all of the people I follow is way more valuable than what I would provide. My following pointIt is not at a point where I feel overloaded and the effect is that I am a more passive twitter user. Over the past few weeks, I have become content with sharing less and now that I have accepted it, my Twitter experience is better than ever.
It does bring a couple of questions to mind which I have started to think about. At what point will my following count actually start to intrude on my experience. Additonally, what is the average following count that people feel comfortable with? Let me know what you think!
(This content was originally posted here on January 29th)
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Here at Tech@NYU, we don't want to seem like another nameless, faceless community. We want you to know what we're made of, or rather who we're made of. That's why we're going to be running a blog series over the next few weeks featuring posts on our different e-board members.
To kick this off, we'd like to introduce you to our current President, Emanuel Hahn. He's a senior in Stern studying finance, but has a huge passion for tech and leadership. Here's what he had to say about himself:
1. Why did you decide to get involved with Tech@NYU?
I was interested in something other than finance and traditional marketing, and technology offered something that was fast-paced, exciting and meaningful
2. What's your current favorite startup/app/website?
Right now, SimpleNote - it's perfect to jot down things that pop into my mind
3. What do you do outside of Tech@NYU? Other hobbies?
I lead a Bible study for Remnant Christian Fellowship every Fridays. I play soccer on Saturdays (when there's time). I take pictures of food, places and people.
4. What's your dream job post-grad?
Working as a product manager at company that helps people directly.
5. What is your advice to students/techies trying to break into the startup space or be successful in technology-related fields?
Don't by shy and be involved in everything that you can - get an internship, go to workshops and meetups, talk to people who are knowledgable, take meetings with interesting people, read a ton, write about topics you're interested in.
6. Fun fact about yourself
I speak 4 languages! Korean, Mandarin, Khmer and English
This is one of (hopefully) many segments designed to give an inside look into what our e-board members, past and present, are reading. Whether it be articles, books, or product reviews-- this sums it up. So if you're looking for tech inspiration or just want a better idea of who we all here, this is a good place to start.
Think of it as an aggregation of our collective thoughts.
Articles:
Why iOS 7 Is Apple's Most Important New Product in Years on Gizmodo
Dropbox has a Radical Plan: Become the Portal to your Digital World on Wired
14 Ways To Get More Out Of Evernote, One Of the Best Productivity Apps on Business Insider
What I learned bootstrapping a 6-figure business from school on Dan Shipper's blog
Blogs, sites, etc.:
Babbage- science and tech blog of the Economist
Asymco- an Apple-focused blog
Oyster- endless access to books with monthly subscription
Books:
A Hacker Manifesto by McKenzie Wark
The Pattern On The Stone: The Simple Ideas That Make Computers Work by W. Daniel Hillis
Age of Context by Robert Scoble & Shel Israel
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering by Frederick Brooks
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
When I applied for an e-board position with Tech@NYU, it was on a whim. I didn’t understand the full scope of the opportunity - to create, build, and plan with a group of people whose talent and passion for technology are unmatched. The tech community in NYC is a burgeoning scene of dedicated entrepreneurs and thinkers, and Tech@NYU is the funnel to that community, leading some of the brightest and most ambitious ideas.
My junior year, I took on the task of Communications Director with a lot of aspirations. I was tested in my vision when I went abroad to London during the Spring semester as it was hard to stay involved without being present. Tech@NYU continued to chug along and inspire students, with or without a blog. However, I don’t like the idea of our initiatives going on without communicating them to the wider public.
This blog will be the hub for the thoughts of our members, and the events that bring the NYC tech community together. We will try to communicate our passion and process for those looking for inspiration and direction. I’m excited to kick off this year with the president Emanuel, who follows the same path as so many amazing leaders before - Kim, Vivek, and Trevor.
So, thanks for visiting our blog. Come back soon. In the meantime, check out the rest of our site.
Email me ([email protected]) with any blog post suggestions or questions about what we do here at Tech@NYU.
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A couple of months ago I was fortunate enough to be able to visit the New York Times office alongside my peers from the Freshmen circuit and of my peers from Tech@NYU. It was an incredible experience and I learnt how technically advanced the New York Times was.
Generally people see it as an online news paper but they actually have a team of 150 members who are working hard to develop the site and to develop the mobile app. We were able to meet the people behind the mobile, Matthew Bischoff (@mb) and Brian Capps (@brianhax), and they were doing amazing things with the mobile app and had shown us a preview of how they deployed and programmed the app itself. The system there was particularly interesting were they had testers in the news room and all around the New York Times office and every night they released an alpha build (after they pushed it on GitHub) and they had beta builds and they were automatically updated in the devices of the testers. This allowed them to get instant feedback on their products which was pretty amazing for me as a developer. I was able to get down some of the products they used, including Green Hopper for bug management and Hockey app for beta testing.
There was also a particularly interesting engineer at New York Times who worked with Steve Jobs on the iPad before it was released. He gave an interesting report on his experience and one of the key things i learnt was that only 5% of the Apple staff had actually met with Steve Jobs before, which was very interesting to me as I would have thought that the CEO of a company would meet alot more than 5% of the individuals. I also learnt that only a few individuals had the knowledge that the iPad existed within the company itself which is also particularly interesting as this shows the secretive nature of the company itself.
We were also about to see some of the unique features they have been developing at the Research and Development lab at New York Times, which was incredibly amazing seeing as they were a newspaper. They were in progress to develop a mirror, which would allow you to read the news, check your calender, tells you descriptions of your medicine (only if it has an RFID tag on it) and also uses facial recognition and the Microsoft Kinect to track your motion. I've attached an image of it below. If you click it you'll be able to see a story by Engadget which includes a video of the working demo.
Moreover, they were also working on a software called Cascade which is a data visualization software, written in Javascript, of tweets of articles by New York Times and their lifetimes. They said that they weren't creating these products to sell them, although they did have a venture side to the research and development, but to see what the future of newspapers and reporting is and to be ready for it.
