THE scrawl on the small poster says, “Who’s afraid of Twitter?” A young woman, possibly of Middle Eastern origin, waves it at a demonstration in New York. Another poster reads “Mubarak is offline”.

A Facebook friend shares a link to the ‘best Egypt protest signs from around the world’. Demonstrators hold placards shouting defiant slogans: “I want to call my mom”, reads one, a reminder that Mubarak cut off Internet access shortly after protesters took to the streets of Cairo and Alexandria.

How important is social media technology in staging a successful revolution, something of the kind witnessed in the Middle East these past weeks? Facebook, Twitter and their like have redefined the relationship between authoritarian political authority and people’s resolve through freer exchange (there is freedom of expression on the Internet unless governments shut it down), making it easier for citizens to collaborate, participate and connect.

There was a time when revolutionaries and activists were defined by their cause, by the dedication that kept them going — not by the tools they used. The 1960s’ American civil rights movement in the south began with a few hundred students demanding change and it grew to radicalise thousands without email, text messaging or Twitter.

Look at Iran’s student protests in the summer of 2009 and I don’t believe that social media technology was used extensively in a country where Internet access is not too widespread and often interrupted. Those tweeting on the protests were mostly western observers, some of them journalists, expatriate Iranians and students. If the world wanted to think that Iran was tweeting 24/7, wouldn’t it make more sense if it were using Farsi and not English — unless all we read was Tehran’s elites? Despite this, the US State Department had Twitter suspend a scheduled maintenance of its website because the government didn’t want to be cut off.

I’m not denying the impact of social media technology but this sort of platform is built on virtual (weaker) ties: people you don’t meet face-to-face, associates who are not always close associates but with whom you can develop strategy about women’s empowerment or equal rights.

If high-risk activism is about knotting ties, sharing ideology and wanting reform — sit-ins, boycotts, million-man marches — then traditional activism with its leaders and hierarchies remains effective. Plugging in the new media has shown results when used in tandem. But then, governments with authority also have control over the Internet (the Tunisian government hacked all Facebook passwords). What happened in Tunisia was not a Facebook revolution, contrary to what many want to believe: that networking sites were used freely to mobilise, inform and inspire the revolutionaries.

What has happened on the streets of Egypt may be enhanced through networking tools (24 per cent of Egypt’s 80 million people have Internet access ) but in the more secular and democratic tradition, young people — revolutionaries in waiting — wanted Mubarak out after decades without political freedom and economic opportunity. The Egyptian uprising was not about the liberal middle-to-upper class elite with democratic sentiments but about millions, without religious and nationalistic ties, wanting freedom and justice. It was high-risk revolution. The Muslim Brotherhood sent its members out onto the streets after realising that it wasn’t just another ordinary protest with little staying power.

So how do Twitter or Facebook get the word out, serving riveting play-by-play updates, and do we exaggerate when validating the theory that social networking sites make a revolution? I think we might be doing this, to an extent.

However, if virtual resistance is a yardstick for success, young people use the net to create techniques for a greater movement, akin to the Velvet Revolution.

Anyone who reads political blogs and tweets (@monaeltahawy, Egyptian-born columnist and commentator; @dima_khatib, Al Jazeera’s Latin America correspondent who has been tweeting about Egypt and Tunisia for weeks in at least four languages) or follows activist-types on Facebook (‘We are all Khaled Said’ group, www.elshaheeed.co.uk, or April 6 Movement in Egypt) knows they are convincing — sharper and shorter than traditional writing. If you wanted to read tweets about why Mubarak should get the boot, you could go to #cairo on Twitter and check out the flames of street power.

When Egyptian tweeters lost the net for a while, Google stepped in, launching a special service for tweeters who could dial a phone number and leave voicemail which was translated and sent on Twitter using the tag #egypt.

Tweets, blogs and texting connect people inside the country and outside, kept many posted on what’s happening. Foreign correspondents using Facebook and Twitter from Cairo and Sharm El Sheikh told us that scuba divers enjoying the Red Sea were not heading home and army helicopters flew so low over Tahrir Square that the cockpit was visible to a CNN reporter. These are more like 140 words of auxiliary news reportage, at times passionate and personal, at times critical and urgent. A retweeted tagline from The Los Angeles Times story read: “The US quietly prepares for post-Hosni Mubarak era in Egypt.”

Tweeting that ah-ha moment is contagious but another worry could be whether these apparent words from the street are sometimes orchestrated by other political players. After the China Internet censure story last year, the US advocates online liberty with Middle Eastern friends and foes. Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s departure left observers on the edge, waiting for Mubarak’s next move, before he stepped down.

So with or without Twitter and her armies, the power of Arab revolutionary fervour is going viral. There’s much decipher via those activist tweets. Maybe you too joined the Facebook virtual march of millions to show solidarity. So, did Mubarak tweet, I wonder?