Twitter's active role in the Arab Spring revolutions a good example of the influence of micro social networks in today's society; While twitter's move to open up private messaging helps those in fear of censorship

Social networks today are part of everybody's daily lives.  This is partly due to the fact that almost everyone can access their Facebook, twitter, YouTube, or any other type of application or social network from basically anywhere through their smartphones, tablets or laptops.  Social networks today have therefore kept improving and growing as their use continues to grow.  Today, almost every website or application connects to some sort of social network, encouraging sharing their information, product, or service through Facebook, twitter, instagram, MySpace etc. 

Keith Urbahn's Tweet on Osama

When Osama bin Laden died in May of 2011, every single media outlet reported the news.  The event was on every news channel and website, including ESPN.  The first place where the story was reported, however, was twitter.  A Pakistani twitter user began to tweet about a helicopter raid and explosions approximately 7 hours before the Obama’s official announcement of Osama’s death.  The first announcements of Osama’s death came around 10:25, by Keith Urbahn, the chief of staff for the former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, when he tweeted “So I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn.”

"One could easily argue that twitter’s power and influence has been growing without signs of slowing down."

Twitter's Monthly Active Users Worldwide

In a “Mashable” poll consisting of somewhere around 20,000 of the website’s readers on how one found out about Bin Laden’s death, the majority (consisting of 31% of the votes) answered with twitter.  Other stories that broke out through twitter were the announcement of the royal wedding, Whitney Houston's death, the Hudson River Plane Crash, and Newt Gingrich's decision to run for president to name a few.  This poll, taken May 1^st of 2011 demonstrates the informative power twitter had two years ago when the amount of monthly active users was somewhere around 70 million.  Today the amount of monthly active twitter users has grown to over 218 million, more than 3 times what it was when Osama died.  One could easily argue that twitter’s power and influence has been growing without signs of slowing down.

Twitter today, as shown above, can be the main source of information to many.  Twitter and other social networks can do a lot more than just inform.  While many can use twitter and other networks to share jokes, organize parties, and start trends, today these social networking platforms can even be used to organize and start revolutions.  Countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Libya have looked to twitter to jump start revolutions that today some are calling the “twitter revolutions.”

"We use Facebook to schedule the protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world." - Arab Activist

Citizens of Egypt Fight President Mubarak with Social Media

Although the start of the revolutions cannot necessarily be accredited to twitter, everyone can agree that twitter held an important role during them.  Domestically, twitter and other social networking sites helped groups organize themselves, while internationally, twitter allowed the outside world to learn about what was going on and then put pressure on governments.  An Arab activist tweeted: "We use Facebook to schedule the protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world.”  Susan Rice, an American U.N. Ambassador, said "The power of this technology, the power of social networking to channel and champion public sentiment, has been more evident in the past few weeks than ever before,” when talking about the Egyptian revolution.  Twitter's influence was so powerful that the Egyptian government attempted to censor what was being said, and ended up blocking twitter completely, as was reported by twitter.  Despite censorship, the amount of tweets in Egypt went from 2,300 up to 230,000 in the week before President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation.

Recently twitter decided to open up private messages to everyone.  The move seems to be business oriented, as this would allow companies to directly contact twitter users in hopes of advertising and promoting their products and therefore allowing twitter to start making some profit as it gets ready to offer its stock publicly. 

Although a good amount of people are reacting negatively to the news because they fear being spammed by companies, a lot of good can come out of this, especially if anyone is trying to start another movement or revolution.  Before people could only send private messages to those who followed them, but now that anyone can communicate with anyone privately, people can begin to communicate with other people they haven’t met before without fear of censorship or punishment as has happened in Egypt, Iran, and Syria to name a few.