Mountain View, Calif. – Aiming to restore some level of
outside communication in protest-ridden Egypt, Google (NASD: GOOG) and Twitter said they
joined forced over the weekend to create a new "speak-to-tweet"
service. The service allows people in the country, who have been cut off from
Internet and wireless access, to send tweets by calling one of three
international phone numbers and leaving a voicemail. The service will instantly
tweet the message using the tag #egypt, with no Internet connection required.
People can listen to the messages by dialing the same phone numbers or going to
twitter.com/speak2tweet.
"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 wrote in its blog.
"Over the weekend we came up with
the idea of a speak-to-tweet service… We worked with a small team of engineers
from Twitter, Google and SayNow, a company we acquired last week, to make this
idea a reality."
As of Tuesday morning, more than 600 tweets had been sent
using the service, which had more than 7,400 followers.
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/4n98ryx
(Google blog)
Finally, an expression of Google’s motto: Don’t Be Evil again. This was a fantastic thing to do. And it’s nice to be associated with something other than blowing up outer countries for a change too. That is so badly needed!