The turmoil in Egypt, which finally led to the stepping down of President Hosni Mubarak, has clearly revealed the power of social media, mobile devices and the web, for organizing as well as informing people.

These widely-used modern-day tools played a substantial role in helping the spread of the images of the Egyptian unrest around the world; and probably, for one of the first times in history, history itself was recorded instantaneously, with most reporters taking the Twitter route to share stories from the protests and keep the world updated.

The two-week-long protests, which began on January 25 and ended in the removal of the president, virtually launched a flood of #Jan25 and #Egypt tweets, over and above the extensive media coverage.

In fact, right from Day 1, the protests in Egypt were propelled by the use of social media; with the revolution beginning, at least partly, on Facebook. It was the creation of Facebook groups which garnered hundreds of thousands of members and promoted the early protests in Cairo.

Later, the Egyptian government blocked Facebook and Twitter in the country and also shut down Internet access completely. However, the move could not keep the news from Egypt from reaching the outside world - Twitter and Facebook users managed to circumvent the blackout before the access was completely restored.