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Google lets Egypt send voice tweets sans Internet

By

On January 31, 2011, 8:14 PM

In response to the Internet blackout in Egypt, a small group of engineers from Google, Twitter and SayNow have developed a "speak-to-tweet" service that lets anyone send messages over Twitter without an Internet connection. Users can tweet by leaving a voice message at one of three international phone numbers (+16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855).

Tweets sent from the service will automatically use the #egypt hashtag and you can listen to the messages of others by calling the same phone numbers or at twitter.com/speak2tweet. Most of the messages aren't in English and many are just people testing the service, but some are truly alarming.


"Like many people we've been glued to the news unfolding in Egypt and thinking of what we could do to help people on the ground," Google said in a blog post. "We hope that this will go some way to helping people in Egypt stay connected at this very difficult time. Our thoughts are with everyone there."

Google's announcement comes as Egypt's last standing ISP is disabled. Noor Group, a DSL provider, managed to remain online last week as the Egyptian government ordered ISPs to pull the plug. Unfortunately, Noor's traffic appears to have trickled to a halt. "As of approximately 20:46 UTC, Noor is no longer reachable from outside of Egypt," reported Renesys, an Internet monitoring firm.

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5 comments

User Comments: 5

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  1. January 31, 2011 9:16 PM
    matrix86
    matrix86 said:

    Virtual high five for Google, Twitter, and SayNow! Great job on this guys!

    Reply
  2. January 31, 2011 10:25 PM
    aj_the_kidd said:

    matrix86 said:

    Virtual high five for Google, Twitter, and SayNow! Great job on this guys!

    +1

    This is a pretty bold step will be interested to see how the Egyptian government responds.

    Reply
  3. January 31, 2011 11:00 PM
    Tanstar said:

    How did anyone in Egypt find out about this? They didn't see it online, so did someone with a lot of Egyptian contacts send out a mass txt or something?

    Reply
  4. February 1, 2011 3:38 AM
    princeton
    princeton said:

    Tanstar said:

    How did anyone in Egypt find out about this? They didn't see it online, so did someone with a lot of Egyptian contacts send out a mass txt or something?

    I think it just spread like a rumor. Someone was told about the service and they told someone, who told all his family, who told their friends ect ect.

    Reply
  5. February 1, 2011 7:51 AM
    pyari said:

    only chance is the telecommunication if that is alive.

    Reply

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