Netizen

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Converting To The Mass Follow Formula On Twitter

InRev TwitIn
TopFollowed
MyTweetFollowers

I only follow about 200 people on Twitter now, and it is not like I read every tweet by every person I follow. You log in, and most of the time you skim through that first page. You spend some time in the stream. So the best way to have a more representative stream might be to follow a large number of people.

But I also like the idea of having a smaller group of people. For that I think I got TweetDeck. There I can create a group for the current 200 people. That way I can get the best of both worlds: TweetDeck to follow a small, intimate group, or two, or three - I also have a group with only 20 people there - and Twitter as a marketing tool.

I am also driven by a desire to jack up the traffic for this blog.

A few minutes back I read this article by my friend in Bangalore Bhupendra Khanal, the top Tweet in that city measured by the number of followers he has - he is also from Nepal like me - and he kind of made me think.

Tweeters: Here's The Growing Formulae! go to a mass follower .... and follow his followers
http://help.twitter.com/forums/10713/entries/14959

Enter Guy Kawasaki: Looking For Mr. Goodtweet: How To Pick Up Followers On Twitter

Kevin Rose: 10 Ways To Increase Your Twitter Followers

Twitter Is Not Micro
The Depth Of Your Friendships At Twitter
Goal: A Billion People On Twitter
Search Come Full Circle: That Human Element
The Search Results, The Links, The Inbox, The Stream
Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter
I Talked To Google Through Twitter And It Worked Like Magic
Twitter And The Time Dimension
What Should Facebook Do
TweetDeck, Power Twitter, Twitter Globe, Better Than Facebook
TCC: Twitter Community College
Twitter Tips: It's A Bird, It's A Bird
Mitch Kapor Now Following Me On Twitter
I Get Twitter

Monday, April 20, 2009

Stephen Hawking Has Taken Sick

I was not around when Newton was around, I was not around when Einstein was around, I missed those dudes by a few centuries combined in passing, but I have been around when Stephen Hawking has been around, and the thought gives me tickles.

My introduction to Hawking was through his book, A Brief History Of Time. I first read it during my Class 10 year, which ordinarily would have been the sophomore year of high school in the American system, except I went to this school in Kathmandu founded by the British, and we did both the Nepali high school thing - high school ended after 10, not 12 years - and the British O and A Levels (a guest speaker one day talked of "A Levels and B Levels," this top doctor dude), long story short, we would end up having 13 years of school. We got told that really prepared us for college. And the O and A Levels came by way of the Cambridge University Board. Hawking was a professor there. That's stretching it, but still. (My Relationship With Ashton Kutcher)

I understood the book during the first reading. It read like a novel, I was able to follow all its concepts: that same year I also read Ted Sorensen's Kennedy, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years Of Solitude. I have been claiming my physics smarts ever since. Around the same time I came face to face with the anti-Madhesi prejudice warps that existed and exists to this day in Nepal and when it came my way by way of the school administration, it felt like waking up to gravity, something fundamental, something that had been around a while, something now whose presence I felt acutely, but lacked any vocabulary to express, more, lacked any power to do something about it. The power was to come two decades later when I threw myself into the Madhesi Kranti in Nepal from the safety of New York City.

I acquired a physics like fascination for social reality. Before I got hit by the social gravity, I wanted to be a medical doctor, that was the first thing I wanted to be in life. Then I realized I don't need a microscope to see germs, I could see them with my naked eyes.

I feel like I am both a high school and a college dropout. I was emotionally absent the final three years of high school, and the final four years of college: I did five years, it is called changing your major too many times.

Group Dynamics

And Hawking speaks to me more today than ever before. Well, I am a tech startup guyperson.

NewsDesk: China, Twitter, Hawking, Obama

China’s Influence Grows Along With Its Car Sales After a century in which American tastes largely set the course of the global automotive market, China is poised to increasingly take on the role of global trendsetter.
The Twitter Revolution The company is hiring like crazy -- it expects to double its size in the next month or two .... Even faster than Google, Amazon and eBay in their days, the three-year-old Twitter has become deeply embedded in the culture.
Twitter & LSD - 25 Similarities LSD alters users’ perceptions of time. What seems like a minute can actually be hours....... Just as mundane experiences can appear fantastic-plastic while on LSD, so too can the experience of otherwise trivial bits of information appear mind-expanding.
Stephen Hawking Very Ill Hawking has been fighting a chest infection for several weeks
Oracle Buys Sun ..... deal halts a downward spiral for Sun ... marks a continuation of Oracle's half-decade-long acquisition tear
History Of Silicon Valley plucky entrepreneurs who start from nothing and against all odds, build a successful company.
Bush And The Rule Of Law The use of torture is part of the laws of war and only Congress has the constitutional authority
Heat Advisory For San Francisco
How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write Every genuinely revolutionary technology implants some kind of "aha" moment in your memory
29 Years Of Robert Mugabe The once prosperous, successful nation has since devolved into a lawless state under the rule of the same man who fought for independence nearly 30 years ago.
Iran's President Slams Israel, Prompts Walkouts Ahmadinejad described the Holocaust as a "pretext" for aggression against Palestinians
Facebook's Recruiting Problem, Explained Facebook's people problem isn't limited to executive retention. The hot startup with over 200 million users also has a surprisingly hard time recruiting new employees -- from top executives to college grads to star Googlers.
Crowd Forms Against an Algorithm On Monday, Amazon.com confessed to “an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error” that caused thousands of books — a large proportion of them gay and lesbian themed — to lose their sales rankings, making them difficult to find in basic searches.
Obamaism: Charm and Disarm The Barack Obama global charm offensive continues unabated as he returns to Washington from Trinidad and Tobago where he spent two days as the main attraction and the great hope at the Fifth Summit of the Americas. In a single weekend, Obama completely transformed the diplomatic landscape of the region, by saying the most reasonable, middle-of-the-road things—We are interested in a different kind of relationship with Cuba. Venezuela is no threat to us; why not be courteous?

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Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Converting To The Mass Follow Formula On Twitter

Monday, April 20, 2009

Stephen Hawking Has Taken Sick

NewsDesk: China, Twitter, Hawking, Obama