APRIL 17, 2008

Finally, Someone Found A Good Use For Twitter

I blogged last week about the power of social media. Now, the San Jose Mercury News reports that an American journalism student used Twitter to get himself out of a dangerous situation while covering a protest in a country that doesn’t believe in “freedom of the press”:

When Egyptian police scooped up UC Berkeley graduate journalism student James Karl Buck, who was photographing a noisy demonstration, and dumped him in a jail cell last week, they didn’t count on Twitter. Buck, 29, a former Oakland Tribune multimedia intern, used the ubiquitous short messaging service to tap out a single word on his cellular phone: ARRESTED. The message went out to the cell phones and computers of a wide circle of friends in the United States and to the mostly leftist, anti-government bloggers in Egypt who are the subject of his graduate journalism project.

The next day, he walked out a free man with an Egyptian attorney hired by UC Berkeley at his side and the U.S. Embassy on the phone.

Twitter, the micro-blogging service for cell phone users, allows messages up to 140 characters long. Twitter users can allow anyone they wish to join their network and receive all their messages. Buck has a large network, so Twitter gave him an instant link to the outside world.

In five years of working with social media, I’ve never found something I have less use for than Twitter. I don’t have an account, I’ve never seen it in action, and I’m not sure I’ve ever even been to the website. My colleague Gayle shared similar thoughts a few weeks ago.

And yet, I am compelled to admit the sheer genius of using a service like Twitter in a situation like this, where time was short and wide distribution of a short message was vitally important. I can only imagine how long Buck might have languished in an Egyptian prison without sending out this Web 2.0 version of an S.O.S. Proof of that lies in the fact that Buck’s interpreter was not so lucky:

U.S. friends on [Buck’s] Twitter net called the university and the American Embassy. They also alerted the Associated Press, the International Herald Tribune and other media, which helped put the heat on the Egyptian authorities. He was released on Friday and returned home on Sunday.

Back home in Berkeley last night he said he’s still worried about his interpreter and friend, Mohammed Salah Ahmed Maree, who was arrested with him and is still being held incommunicado by Egyptian authorities. Unlike Buck, he didn’t have the muscle of the U.S. Embassy and UC Berkeley.

Kudos to his Twitter followers for taking the initiative to get in touch with the university, the embassy, and the press. Their quick thinking and willingness to intervene was obviously pivotal in Buck’s release.

I’ve never been a fan, Twitter, but for this young man’s sake, I’m glad you’re there. Let’s hope that Maree is equally fortunate in the days to come.