• Egyptian President Steps Down Amidst Groundbreaking Digital Revolution

• Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has stepped down, more than two weeks after the protests that began January 25 in the country — and launched a flood of #Jan25 and #Egypt tweets as well as media coverage that broke the mold — to remove the president from power.

   

  From the beginning, the revolution in Egypt was propelled by the use of social media. It at least partly began on Facebook with the creation of Facebook groups that gained hundreds of thousands of members and promoted the early protests in Cairo.

• Subsequently, the government blocked Facebook and Twitter and eventually shut down Internet access completely. And with the outside world following the unfolding revolution online, political leaders and others, including Twitter, spoke out against the violence and freedom of expression issues at risk.

   

  But even a government shut down couldn't keep the news from flowing. Twitter and Facebook users found ways to work around the blackout. Though, eventually access was completely restored.

• But Al Jazeera had its "CNN Moment," and although it couldn't reach viewers in the U.S. by cable television, it found a way to viewers — on YouTube. The network live streamed Mubarak's public address — in which many believed he would resign — Thursday via YouTube. But Al Jazeera's comprehensive coverage put it on the radar for U.S. viewers and it created a campaign to bring its English-language network to U.S. televisions.

   

  Images of the turmoil spread around the world via Flickr and Youtube, too. Al Jazeera made its images available by a Creative Commons license and its work reached an even broader audience around the world.
• Without a doubt, social media, mobile devices and the web have brought the stories from Egypt closer to home

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• Spotlight Again Falls on Web Tools and Change
• WASHINGTON — Fear is the dictator’s traditional tool for keeping the people in check. But by cutting off Egypt’s Internet and wireless service late last week in the face of huge street protests, President Hosni Mubarak betrayed his own fear — that Facebook, Twitter, laptops and smartphones could empower his opponents, expose his weakness to the world and topple his regime.
• the new arsenal of social networking helped accelerate Tunisia’s revolution, driving the country’s ruler of 23 years, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, into ignominious exile and igniting a conflagration that has spread across the Arab world at breathtaking speed. It was an apt symbol that a dissident blogger with thousands of followers on Twitter, Slim Amamou, was catapulted in a matter of days from the interrogation chambers of Mr. Ben Ali’s regime to a new government post as minister for youth and sports. It was a marker of the uncertainty in Tunis that he had stepped down from the government by Thursday.

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• Egypt’s ‘Facebook generation’ pressures Mubarak to step down

    

        By Andrew Couts — February 11, 2011
• After nearly three weeks of anti-government protests in Egypt, the country’s embattled president, Hosni Mubarak, has stepped down from power, The New York Times reports. Control of the country has been handed over to the Egyptian military, which has pledged to enact a series of constitutional reforms.

• Ghonim, went missing on January 28, three days after protests erupted in the Middle Eastern country on January 25. Egyptian authorities later released the Google executive on February 7. Ghonim was part of a larger group of tech-savvy revolutionaries who helped spark Egypt’s pro-democratic movement.

   

  Upon hearing the news of Mubarak’s resignation, Ghonim — who rejects his “hero” label — tweeted to his followers, “The real hero is the young Egyptians in Tahrir square and the rest of Egypt,” punctuated by the now-iconic “#Jan25″ hashtag. He followed this up with, “Welcome back Egypt.”

   

  Social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter played a vital role in the Egyptian revolution, helping to get word out to the rest of the world about what was happening on the ground. This, in spite of the government’s near-complete five-day shutdown of Internet, Blackberry and mobile phone access in Egypt.

   

  Google also helped, having created a Speak2Tweet application, with the help of Twitter, that enabled protesters to phone-in their tweets.

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• Internet & Technology

      

     

  Mubarak regime shuts down Internet in futile attempt to stop protests

• CAIRO (IPS) - Twitter was an early casualty. Then Facebook access became spotty. But when the Internet itself went down, Egyptian pro-democracy activists knew their protests were having an effect.

   

  This report was dictated on landline phone from Cairo to the IPS office in London.

   

  “The government shut down the Internet to keep us from telling the world about what’s really happening here,” says Sherif Gomaa, a cafe employee protesting in downtown Cairo

• Social networks credited with role in toppling Egypt's Mubarak

     

  Activists used Facebook, Twitter, YouTube to mobilize during protests

• Three years ago, an activist started the April 6 Movement page on Facebook to support striking workers. The page has drawn in more than 60,000 members concerned with issues like free speech, the country's poor economy and frustration with the government.

    

  Activists also started a page on Facebook dedicated to Khaled Said, an activist blogger allegedly beaten to death by police last year.

    

  What's been particularly interesting is that the Egyptian activists weren't simply looking for people to "like" their protest pages or to give people a place to vent their frustrations. They used social networking sites to engage people -- to motivate them into action, not just online but in the real world.

    

  In some ways, Egyptians seemed to take a page from President Obama's social networking playbook. Obama successfully used social networking sites, like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to help drive his 2008 presidential campaign. And his staffers knew that it wasn't enough for supporters to simply "like" his Facebook page or follow his campaign's tweets; They needed to use social media to galvanize real action in the real world.