"Twitter" springs Buck from Egyptian gaol Using the Twitter service enabled James Karl Buck to get out of gaol by contacting all his contacts at once with the word: arrested. This enabled his friends to rally around and get him a lawyer who finally convinced the authorities to let him go.

Twitter is a web-based social networking service that enables text type messages no longer than 140 characters long to be posted on web page which in turn can be read through a variety of different clients: sms / mobile phone text, instant messaging, blog page...

The concept is simple. We update our circle of contacts with a running commentary on our lives in response to the question: What are you doing?

This technology has both its fans (including the US presidential campaigns of Ron Paul, John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton) and its detractors.

An early vulnerability where a poster could fake the origins of the message was plugged when Twitter introduced a pin code security system. This may go some way to allaying fears that any form of technology can be turned into a weapon in the hands of the bullies and fraudsters in the cyber-community. Indeed, there is even an anti cyberbullying group on Twitter.

The biggest complaint, along with many other aspects of social networking applications, is that it really is a waste of time and, as with so many other aspects of Web 2.0, addictive.

Coming back to James Karl Buck, we must also point out that an Egyptian friend of his was not released with him even if he was arrested at the same time and for the same reasons. This was where the virtual world could not interface with the real.