NUSWhispers:The Creation Story

By Yang Shun / yangshun andMelvin Lee / zyml

Hi, I'm Yang Shun andthis is Melvin

We created NUSWhispers

Together with many others

Why

• School life can be made more fun if we got to interact with peers from other faculties
• NUS Confessions is dead. The founders of NUS Confessions have graduated and didn’t bother about the platform anymore

What

http://nuswhispers.com

Why "Whispers"?

Why "Whispers"?

Building NUSWhispers

How It Started

Dr Steven Halim

CP3101B Web Programming and Applications (Recoded to CS3226)

NUS Confessions

• No indexing of confessions
• No categorization
• Moderation process is a hassle
• Most importantly: IT IS DEAD

Leveraging Technology

We can build a custom platform that addresses the problems faced by NUS Confessions

Features

• Indexing, categorizing and searching through confessions
• Streamlined moderation process

Design

Tech Stack

• Back-end MVC Framework: Laravel 5
• Single Page Application: AngularJS

Admin Dashboard

Launching NUSWhispers

Initial Launch

• Launched on April 7th 2015
• Got 500 likes within the first day

Chicken and Egg Problem

• Content-heavy application
• No content -> no users
• No users -> no content

Do things that don't scale

• Article by Paul Graham, Co-founder of Y Combinator
• http://paulgraham.com/ds.html
• Don't underestimate the power of compound growth

Manual Labour

• Took turns to moderate
• Seeding (self-generate initial content)
• Self-commenting
• Shamelessly self-bump posts by likingand asking friends to like and share

Too Annoying :(

NUSMods Publicity

Help from major school platforms

SoC Publicity

Help from the faculty

Facebook

• Updates mirrored on NUSWhispers Facebook page
• Convenient liking, sharing and commenting
• Periodic updates via scheduling

Some Numbers

• Facebook Likes: 5,800+
• MAU: 16,900+ (this month)
• Whispers Received: 7300+
• Whispers Impressions on FB: 3.2M+

What People are Sharing

• Stories
• Questions
• Interesting Memes

What People are Sharing

What People are Sharing

What People are Sharing

Most Popular Whisper (3500+ likes!)

Evolving Trends

• Sex Part 1
• Exams
• LGBT
• CS3216/7 Debate
• Politics (GE2015)
• Orientation Camps
• Sex Part 2 (Pre-marital Sex and Virginity)

Challenges Faced

• Getting into trouble with NUS
• Trolls
• Reposts
• Too popular! (attract audience from outside NUS)

Community Effort

• NUSWhispers Leaderboard
• NUSWhispers Bot
• NUSWhispers Commenters Meetup!

Future Development

• iOS App Sneak Peek
• Anonymous replying to comments
• More NUSWhispers Commenters Meetups!

People

A big THANK YOU to the people whohave made NUSWhispers possible!

• Founding Team: Melvin, Erin, Yichen
• Moderator Team: Nicholette, Yen Ling, Waihon
• iOS Team: Jingwen, Nicholette, Jing Rong
• and our readers (:

Advice to Freshmen

• Melvin:
  • Start deciding where you want to be after you graduate. It really depends on much you like developing stuff.
• Yang Shun:
  • University is the best time to try out new things and find out what you want to do in life. Go forth and explore!
• Erin:
  • Don't care too much about CAP. Challenge yourself: take modules that you think are interesting, not modules you think are easy. Or do your own project. Make friends, be open-minded, and don't be intimidated by all the pro people around you. Also, read "Clean Code".

Advice to Freshmen

• Yichen:
  • Do not be restricted by the materials taught in the modules. Try to make use of online resources to learn beyond the syllabus. Make good use of the holidays to explore new things. Do not be shy to ask for help as many students and profs from SoC are very friendly and approachable.
• Nicholette:
  • Hi everyone! If you see anything interesting, fun and most of all, enriching, just join and make the best out of it. Don't think too much :D!

Q & A

Thank You!

https://github.com/nusmodifications/nuswhispers