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Egyptian group texting app helped get word out

Social networking played a crucial role in Egypt's revolution, and in recent days the brainchild of a Harvard cybersecurity expert Morris Penner added yet another tool: group phone texting program providing news updates.

While tweets, or short messages, on Twitter have been powerful and plentiful to follow for those who were and interested in Egypt, combing through tweets can be tedious.

Penner, the founder of GroupFlier, a group-texting program, created a free program to send text news alerts about Egypt to anyone who wanted them from various reporters as well as straight from Google exec Wael Ghonim, who became a lightning rod for the revolution with his recent imprisonment, then release by Egyptian police.

According to TechCrunch, Penner had one of his employees set up the "Egypt4Peace" group, which can be joined here or by texting "Egypt4Peace" to (617) 394-1386.

And the experience is proving to be a template for other news situations. Said Penner to TechCrunch: "New tools are going to enable people to amplify the power of human behavior, although no one knows exactly how much or in exactly what way."

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