Google keeps Egyptians tweeting

Firm offers service to internet-deprived population in protest

Google is attempting to keep the Egyptian population online by launching a service that will allow civilians to send messages on Twitter by dialling a phone number and leaving a voicemail.

The country has been beset with civil protest for days now, and internet access to civilians was cut off over the weekend.

"Like many, we've been glued to the news unfolding in Egypt and wondering how we could help people on the ground.

"Over the weekend we came up with the idea of a speak-to-tweet service that allowed people to tweet using just a voice connection," said Ujjwal Singh, co-founder of SayNow, a company Google acquired last week, and AbdelKarim Mardini, product manager, Middle East and North Africa, in a joint blog post.

The post explains that Google teamed up with engineers from Twitter as well as the newly-acquired SayNow to develop the service.

The service is already live and anyone can tweet by simply leaving a voicemail on +16504194196, +390662207294 or +97316199855. The service will instantly tweet the message using the hashtag #egypt.

No internet connection is required to leave messages and people can also listen to messages by dialling the phone numbers or going to twitter.com/speak2tweet.

"We hope that this will go some way to helping people in Egypt stay connected at this very difficult time. Our thoughts are with everyone there," the post concluded.