Twitter Revolution

I don’t think that there is any doubt social media played a big role in the changes still happening in Egypt. This visualization shows how #jan25 tweets (and retweets) boomed as the movement accelerated.

The Egyptian Revolution on Twitter

Fascinating, eh? There were other hashtags and, of course, Facebook played a role too, along with Mr. Wael Gholim of Google and a wide group of associates. Even with ups and downs for protests and jailings and the Internet being turned off, there was still power in the network.

It makes me think. I watched as a loose band of UK librarians used Facebook and Twitter and the #savelibraries hastag to organize loosely, attract attention of the mainstream media, lead and drive home their points.

I’d dearly love to see a timelapse video of the #savelibraries hashtag for 2011.

It is not a small insight that social media can be used by librarians and library supporters to influence our future(s).

Stephen