Video sharing website YouTube has been highlighting video from the protests in Egypt for days, but tonight the official YouTube blog put up a post describing a number of steps it’s taking to make sure the world knows what’s going on in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez and elsewhere around that country.
The Egyptian government is trying hard to black-out all media coverage of the huge protests challenging the three decade long rule of President Hosni Mubarak, but media is still getting out. YouTube appears to be doing what it can: every page on the site now has a banner pointing to the collection of Egypt protest videos, those videos are highlighted on the site’s front page and YouTube is streaming Al Jazeera’s coverage in English and Arabic. Imagine what would happen if Twitter and Facebook did something like this.
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The protests in Egypt are a huge story in politics, in media and in technology. Egypt is one of the most geopolitically important countries in the world.
Understood in context, these protests could be key in an unfolding history that changes the world forever. Old media is rushing to Egypt to cover it as well as it can: Nicholas Kristof and Anderson Cooper, for example, are Tweeting and Facebooking up a storm from the streets of Cairo.
It’s fitting of YouTube’s role in a rapidly transforming media world that the site is aiming the focus of its audiences directly at these important offline events. Twitter’s making it easier for Egyptians to Tweet by phone. Facebook is being used extensively by protesters for their own communication. Do you think it would be a good idea for Facebook to take official steps to draw the eyes of all the rest of its users to the conflict in Egypt?
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