The Egyptian Behind #Jan25: “Twitter Is A Very Important Tool For Protesters”

Social media's role in the Egyptian revolution has been picked apart , but what do people in Egypt think about it? Meet Alyouka , the 21-year-old Egyptian who was the first person to Tweet out the #Jan25 hashtag which, along with #Egypt, became a rallying cry and loose way to organize communications around and about the protests. Twitter found Alyouka (no last name given) and asked her to write a post about her experience with social media on its hope140 blog . "Twitter is a very important tool for protesters," she writes. While she credits Facebook with being amore important organizing tool, Twitter was the communications tool of choice among a "certain class of activists . . . armed with smartphones." She explains how the protesters used Twitter: