In Egypt, a Facebook page managed by Wael Ghonim became the unlikely gathering place for a protest movement that had many parts but eventually was galvanised by Ghonim.
Revolution 2.0 is a fascinating book if you take the time to gloss over some of Ghonim's personal agonies about what he did during the Egyptian revolution. Although he often tries to downplay his own part in the running of the page, named after Khaled Said, a murdered young Egyptian, Ghonim moralises throughout the book.
Ghonim worked for Google and had to juggle his job, his campaign and his family duties. He shifted to Saudi Arabia in an effort to keep his family safe. But his wife still worried and wondered about what he was doing and whether he would survive. Each time he left for Egypt, he said prolonged goodbyes to his children, believing he might not return.
He was captured by authorities at one stage, thrown into a black hole of a prison and interrogated. At that time, the revolution took hold and by the time he was released, most of the damage to the regime had been done.
However, the book is well worth a read because it does show how powerful social media can be used in such a situation. Attempts by the Egyptian regime to belatedly use social media to try to discredit the Facebook campaign proved to be more of a catalyst for revolution than anything else.
And shutting down the internet in Egypt also proved to be useless as Ghonim ran his page off servers in Saudi and young people used their smartphones to spread the message through text-messaging and by using satellite coverage to access Facebook.
As it turned out, progress in Egypt a year later has not been as fast as expected.
Ghonim writes: "Inevitably, in the wake of the fervour and unity of the revolution, public opinion has fractured, uncertainties have swirled, and we are still a long way from fully established democracy. I do not pretend to have a crystal ball that can foretell Egypt's future, but I do believe that Egyptians will never again put up with another pharaoh".
• Dene Mackenzie is the technology writer for the Otago Daily Times.
