Egyptian Jail, Social Networking, and Twitter

One of my students sent me this story on CNN about a student who was arrested and jailed in Egypt and who communicated this to the outside world via Twitter. While I think about the networking and communication and leadership possibilities of the microblogging application Twitter, there seem to be even life-or-death uses for this simple online program.

I have used it with my classes, at conferences, to learn of breaking news, to communicate with people I follow whose email addresses I do not have, to communicate via my BlackBerry when I have no other access, to ask questions in the style of the wisdom of crowds, to follow industry colleagues whom I respect, and to share the little things I do as they occur. I never considered Twitter in this manner.

Who knows what other ways Web 2.0 are changing our ways of living; quite literally. Have you seen any novel uses of Web 2.0 that shows our ways of interacting and communicating are changed for good?