The Revolution Will Be Twittered

Before traveling to Egypt to work on his graduate school thesis, James Buck, a 29-year-old American student at the University of California Berkeley, had never heard of the social blogging site Twitter. But after a run-in with Egyptian police, Buck says that the relatively new technology may have saved his life.

(ABC News and James Buck)

On April 10, the day before Buck was to head back home from a three-week assignment studying the Egyptian blogosphere, he traveled to Mahalla, Egypt, with his translator Mohammed, to take photos of a protest there.

"I was trying to take some photos of this small protest and trying to be very clear that I was not in the protest," Buck said from California. "It was very tense."

During his trip, Buck began using Twitter, which allows users to send out 140-character messages to their Twitter feed via e-mail, instant messaging or cell phone text-messaging. Twitter operates somewhat like a personal RSS feed; people who subscribe to your feed will receive all of the messages you send out.

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As Buck and his translator tried to leave the protest in a taxi, Buck says they were chased and then detained by Egyptian police. As their cab driver drove the pair to the police station under direction by the police, Buck sent out a single-word message from his cell phone to his Twitter feed: Arrested.

"I sent it to 10 different people, including Twitter. Right away I got [text messages] back from people saying, 'Right now? What do we do?'" Buck said. "I made use of sort of every second I could, trying to tell them to call the embassy immediately."

Twenty-four hours later, with help from the Egyptian bloggers who received the message and alerted his university and the U.S. Embassy, Buck walked out of the police station a free man. His translator Mohammad was left behind.

"If I hadn't been able to get a message to the outside world instantly and to a wide network of people, there's certainly a good chance I would still be there," Buck said.