“The Facebook Revolution”

The revolution in Egypt to demand president Mubarak step down after three decades of authoritarian rule started in Jun 2010 and escalated in January 2011. This revolution, often called “the Facebook revolution” or “the social media revolution” started on Facebook.

Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians signed up for Facebook accounts and started passing on information about planning the protests and requests to join them, on this social networking website. This helped to speed the process along. One of the Facebook events for a protest had about 94 000 people signed up to attend. The main leader of this protest, Wael Ghonim said that he wants to meet Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and thank him for inventing Facebook. Facebook as a company has taken great part to appeal neutral towards this issue due to concerns about authorities shutting down this social networking website in other countries of the world as well.

Government in Egypt apparently must have been threatened by Facebook, because streets were overcrowded with people carrying signs stating “thank you Facebook” in English and Arabic. As soon as they found out what kind of activity is going on they shut the Internet connection in the whole country for several days in an attempt to quell the protests. In police states there is often phone taps and government informers present in public places where people choose to meet, so Facebook provided an outlet for the youth and citizenry to organize themselves and protest for their rights. Protests in Tunisia were also communicated trough Facebook, but on a smaller scale.

Social media have a strong impact on society and Facebook is currently the most popular social networking website, used internationally. The revolution in Egypt shows how powerful media tool Facebook is, and how much it helped to change the history of such a conservative country like Egypt.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-01-26/egypts-revolution-by-internet/#