Author Topic: How Google with help of SINGH removed the muzzle on Twitter in Egypt!! (Read 2315 times)

Kudrat Kaur · « **on:** February 09, 2011, 10:44:00 PM »

From left, Twitter Vice-President International Katie Stanton and Google employees Ujjwal Singh and Steve Crossan pose for a portrait at Google headquarters in Mountain View , Calif.,

Even before his first day on the job at Google, Ujjwal Singh was trying to figure out how to use his passion for the spoken word and the company's technological prowess to help Egyptians bypass government efforts to muzzle the massive protests there.

Ujjwal Singh, 38, helped start an online service that lets fans share voice messages with the likes of Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers. Google bought the startup Jan. 25, and a Google product team leader trying to figure out a way around Egypt's recent Internet blackout asked Singh for help before he reported to work.
A weekend of brainstorming and programming later, Speak2Tweet was born - a service that lets people call a phone number and leave a message, then posts a link to the message to Twitter.

It allowed Egyptians to communicate even as the regime of President Hosni Mubarak cut Internet and cell phone services for days, trying to squelch furious protests in the streets of Cairo demanding an end to his three decades of authoritarian rule.
By the time Singh started his job Monday, his service was already part of the uprising.

Almost 2,900 spoken tweets had been posted as of Friday afternoon on the Twitter account (at) speak2tweet. Some of the heaviest volume came after access to both Twitter and the Internet was restored in Egypt earlier this week. The alternative method of tweeting has turned into a forum for longer-form expression because the voice recordings aren't confined to Twitter's 140-character limit.

Even so, it provided a vital link between Egypt and the rest of the world, says Cynthia Wong, director of the Center for Democracy & Technology's Project on Global Internet Freedom. As the word of the service spreads, York expects it to attract more voice messages because only about one-fourth of Egypt's population has Internet access.

Author Topic: How Google with help of SINGH removed the muzzle on Twitter in Egypt!! (Read 2315 times)

Kudrat Kaur

How Google with help of SINGH removed the muzzle on Twitter in Egypt!!

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