Twitter flood heralds Egypt’s return to the internet

"Internet is back in Egypt! I am tweeting this from my fone in Alex," tweeted Rawya Rageh.

The government-imposed internet blackout from late on February 27 came after anti-government protests erupted across the country.

Even blocked sites such as Twitter and Facebook have been restored, but mobile phone services, such as text messaging, are still not functioning fully, according to the Financial Times.

Mobile phone operators were instructed to suspend services on Friday last week, but mobile operator Vodafone was one of the first to restore services, after just 24 hours.

Social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook have been credited with playing an important role in mobilizing protests last week.

Even after the blackout was introduced, Egyptians were able to publish tweets using the Speak2Tweet voice-to-text services introduced by Twitter in collaboration with Google.

This story was first published by Computer Weekly

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