Originally Posted by
RussianTexan
You may be overestimating the role of Facebook in the Middle Eastern revolutions. Do you KNOW how much internet penetration there was in Egypt? Like, 19%. It's really not that much compared to Western economies. Cell phones, on the other hand, are significantly more prevalent. A lot of the Tahrir Square protests were organized via text message and good old-fashioned conversation face-to-face.
You can use FB (and Twitter) very easily with just a mobile phone. One to one texting doesn't scale - that's the whole point of social media, your FB post/tweet is one to many and a very effective way to spread a message or information. I'm not taking a side on whether FB and social media were instrumental in Egypt, but I wouldn't discount FB just because of lack of internet penetration. One of the reasons phones are so prevalent is that one device serves so many functions: phone, computer, music player, gaming.