T is for Tahrir, Twitter and Toppling dictators

Yesterday there was a revolution. It also happened to be tweeted.

So, despite Malcolm Gladwell’s moving argument, he was technically wrong.

Of course, at the same moment I feel like most criticism against Gladwell actually tends to further the meat of his argument. I read Dave Pell’s almost immediate response and his more recent tirade, and both tend to refer to Twitter as a more advanced version of the telegraph.

Even Gladwell appears to have been swept up into this silly argument over the importance of social media in a people’s protest.

His argument was that no revolution has required anything more than the discipline and resolve of its members.

Pell, meanwhile, likes to poke fun at this by pointing out how people have embraced this new medium and how governments actually started to target it. According to Pell, social media didn’t cause the revolt and it didn’t continue it but it sure as heck helped it.

So, where does social media fit into all of this?

Oh, I know, right here.

We’ve probably all heard the arguments that television helped fuel American’s growing discontent with the war in Vietnam. Well perhaps the same can be said of Twitter.

No, I don’t think a lack of Twitter or Facebook would’ve stopped Egyptians from fighting for their rights. Yet no one now can really doubt the usefulness of this new online network for their cause. Of course, even Mubarak may be forgiven for thinking that a “Twitter Revolution” would be fickle and spineless, but this wasn’t a Twitter revolution.

This was a people’s revolution. That also happened to be tweeted.