Earlier in the month, I logged into Facebook - as I seldom seem to do these days - and was delighted to see this message:
If you read my post back in May, or saw the story elsewhere, you'll know that Mohammed had been missing since the 13th of April, after he was arrested by the Egyptian authorities during a public protest.
It's wonderful news that Mohammed's whereabouts is now known - although it has been reported that he was subject to beatings and electric shocks whilst in detention, so I hope that he is safe from any further repercussions.
I can't help wondering whether James Buck's efforts to publicise Mohammed's plight helped to secure his release?
There is no doubt that, through his clever use of social media, he managed to mobilise a huge amount of support and - most effective of all in this case - make some considerable noise about the issue.
And now, apparently, Twitter has been in discussions with James about developing an emergency network, linked to their service, that could be used by activists and in crisis situations.
When you consider how quickly news about the earthquake in China spread via Twitter earlier in the year, it makes absolute sense to promote the ability it has to spread messages, globally, in 'real time'. Although, as users know only too well, Twitter will have to become a lot more stable to cope with the increased traffic for this to be the really powerful tool it has the potential to be - otherwise, another of the up and coming social media channels will simply pick it up and run with it.
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