Now the people of Egypt can phone in their tweets from landlines like this pay phone in Cairo.
If this isn’t a great use of technology, I don’t know what is.
To help the people of Egypt communicate despite the government shut down of ISPs and mobile phone networks, Google has partnered with Twitter to allow Egyptians to tweet via landline phones.
It’s all possible because of a technology created by SayNow, a start-up Google acquired just last week. Basically you can phone in your tweet and it appears as an audio file on Twitter.
“It’s already live and anyone can tweet by simply leaving a voicemail on one of these international phone numbers (+16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855) and the service will instantly tweet the message using the hashtag #egypt. No Internet connection is required. People can listen to the messages by dialing the same phone numbers or going to twitter.com/speak2tweet.”
When will the politicians of the world learn that as technology advances, it’s harder to overcome the will of the people?
Cross-posted on tech.johntaylor.co, my tech policy blog.
Related articles
- How Egyptians Can Tweet Without the Internet (readwriteweb.com)
- Google vs. Egyptian Censorship (reason.com)
- How To Help Egypt Get Online (huffingtonpost.com)
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