We recently picked up this story from CNN that relates the story of a political activist who harnessed the power of the social networking site Twitter to get himself released from an Egyptian prison.

James Karl Buck was attending an anti-government protest in Mahalla, Egypt to research the impact of blogging on that country’s political establishment when he and his translator, Mohammed Maree, were arrested. The University of California-Berkeley graduate student had been introduced to Twitter the week prior by friends, and within seconds of being picked up by Egyptian authorities he sent a simple one word message from his cell phone to the site: “arrested.” This was instantly picked up by his colleagues and propagated across numerous blogs and websites.

In a deviation from their normal practices, Egyptian authorities did not confiscate Buck’s cell phone even after he was brought to the police station. This allowed him to be able to update friends on Twitter as to changes in his condition, telling them that he had spoken to a prosecutor but had not been formally charged with a crime. Less than 24 hours later Buck was released, and he repeated the same action he had performed upon his arrest, this time updating his friends with another one word message: “free.”

Bookmark It