by Iain
28. February 2011 12:14
The beginning of 2011 has been one of the most tumultuous periods in recent history for the Middle East, with countries across the region - from Tunisia and Egypt to Yemen and Libya, experiencing political unrest and violence as people take to the streets in demonstration against unpopular incumbent regimes. The history and politics of the area is not something I pretend to fully understand, so I’ll keep this post about the simple but effective piece of innovation that these hard times have brought about, namely Speak2tweet.
Speak2tweet (@speak2tweet), is a joint endeavour between Google, Twitter and SayNow – a company recently acquired by Google which specialises in merging voice technology with social media. It was launched on the 31st of January with the intention of helping the people of Egypt stay connected with each other and the outside world after the Egyptian government shut down internet access in an attempt to disrupt protesters. The service is essentially a voicemail service that allows the distribution of messages via Twitter, allowing people in the affected areas to post and listen to messages without the need for internet access.
So how does it work?
Users simply ring one of three freephone numbers and leave a short voicemail. A link to the voicemail is then posted on Twitter’s designated speak2tweet page with hashtags automatically added to indicate the message’s country of origin. People without internet access can listen to messages by dialling the same numbers. At the time of writing, @speak2tweet had already logged over 2,500 tweets.
Soon after the service was launched, the sites Alive in Egypt, and later, Alive in Libya were set up to translate Arabic voicemails into English and transcribe them, giving people around the world an up-to-date account of what’s happening in the Middle East.
Simple concepts in a high tech environment
Speak2Tweet proves that simple, intuitive innovations are often the ones that gain traction in the online world, much like Twitter itself did back in 2006. The microblogging site’s original concept of sharing 140 character updates with friends was brilliantly simple, arguably one of the reasons it’s been so successful and now has around 200 million users worldwide.
In my opinion, Google have created an uncomplicated, effective solution in Speak2tweet, and anything that can help people stay in touch and share information under the very difficult circumstances in the Middle East is a good thing.
It seems this time, the search giant that doesn’t always seem to live by their mantra of ‘Don’t be Evil’, deserves a pat on the back.