Twitter and the San Diego Fires: An Interview with Nate Ritter

Britt Bravo — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 14:15:09 -0500

" But in the end, it's a tool. It's a tool that engages the people who are watching what you're doing. Every business, every nonprofit, every organization, and even every person has their own network of people that they're dealing with, you can call them followers or friends or whatever. It's a way to engage with them and tell them what you're doing on a quick basis. Especially if the people who you're dealing with also engage using Twitter, then you have an automatic tool that you're both using. It's like both having cell phones, or both having faxes, or both having email addresses. It makes sense."

Keeping with the Twitterery theme of this week, below is the edited transcript of an interview I did with Nate Ritter before this month's Net Tuesday San Francisco, where he presented. Nate is a web developer and consultant who used Twitter as a help center during the San Diego fires. You can follow Nate's tweets at twitter.com/nateritter. The audio interview is available on the NetSquared Podcast.

Nate Ritter: My name is Nate Ritter and I'm a web developer, strategy consultant, and entrepreneur. I'm on the Board of Directors for a nonprofit called Giving Anonymously.

What I did with Twitter was actually completely by accident. I ended up seeing that fires were happening, saw the news, and all that kind of thing. It started to get bigger and bigger and bigger. I didn't have experience in the previous fires that were happening in San Diego, but I knew about them. It was such a large scale thing.

I thought, "Well, if this is going to turn into anything like it was a few years ago, then somebody's got to be putting out some kind of information on Twitter; I thought, could be me, who knows?" [laughs]

I started actually to blog, and I ended up finding too much information to blog--it went so fast--so I ended up using Twitter because it was so quick, short, to the point, just facts, and I could post a zillion times, so it was really fast. I was using it as an experiment more than anything, just to see how much could be done.

People started picking up on it. I started getting people following me. I got emails and text messages from people as far away, actually, as India, which was completely amazing to me. At that point, I was like "OK, I am committed."

DIA DE LOS MUERTOS GOES DIGITAL!

michelle shutzer — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 16:45:39 -0400

DIA DE LOS MUERTOS GOES DIGITAL!Ombligo de los Barrios Chicano Park Wireless Network to launch with a FREE Dia de los Muertos/Day of the Dead Celebration Sunday October 30th, 2005, 12pm - 4pm

Chicano Park, San Diego, California

El Ombligo de los Barrios (the Chicano Park WiFi network) launches with a free family-oriented celebration of Dia de los Muertos from 12pm to 4pm. This fun-filled, family-oriented day honors the Day of the Dead holiday traditions , celebrates the distinctive Barrio Logan culture, and provides an opportunity for all to explore the benefits that wireless technology can bring to a community. The event is free and open to all.

NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoup.org - San Diego

Twitter and the San Diego Fires: An Interview with Nate Ritter

DIA DE LOS MUERTOS GOES DIGITAL!