“The world only gets better because people risk something to make it better. Congrats Egypt,” Paulo Coelho, the famous Brazilian poet and author of ‘The Alchemist’ wrote recently. The message echoed in cyberspace as it got re-tweeted over and over again.

But what brought the Egyptians, seemingly oblivious of their own security, together at Tahrir Square? The answer: social media. The world is acknowledging in awe that Facebook and Twitter proved to be the harbinger of the revolution that began in Tunisia and has now spilled over into Iran. In Iran, just as in Libya and Bahrain, the common people are venting their anger against their authoritarian governments through Facebook and Twitter while protesting on the roads.

A 26-year-old Egyptian woman, Asmaa Mahfouz, wrote on Facebook in January, “People, I am going to Tahrir Square.” The word spread and the people flocked to Tahrir Square.

What was missing in this revolution? The answer: charismatic leaders who could lead the struggle, right from building the strategy to its culmination. This headless uprising could only have happened in the age of the social media.

Revolutions in the past, be it in France, Russia or, for that matter, India or South Africa, always needed a central pivotal character. It was well-nigh impossible to imagine a revolution without a Lenin or Gandhi or Mandela. The Afro-American community in the United States needed a Martin Luther King, just as the ongoing movement in Myanmar primarily revolves around Aung San Suu Kyi.

Egypt, then, seems an exception. But seen along with Tunisia and the other neighbouring nations where the spirit has spread fast, it soon becomes apparent that the real force is the social media. Of course, in Egypt, a young Google employee, Wael Ghonim, played an animated role on the Facebook. So did Dalia Ziada, who translated King’s struggle in Arabic in a comic form. Similarly, in Tunisia, an unemployed youth Mohamed Bouazizi who died as a result of police brutality, became a rallying figure. However, none of these people really led the struggle as the leaders of yore. Yet, the revolution proved just as effective thanks to Facebook and Twitter which triggered it in the first place.

“This revolution started online. This revolution started on Facebook,” Ghonim said. Interestingly, that happened even as just about one in nine Egyptians has access to the internet, and around nine percent of that group are on Facebook. But log onto http://www.facebook.com/elshaheeed.co.uk?v=wall, the source for Facebook interaction during the Egyptian struggle, and you will find more than 85,000 people attached to this page getting updated information which they further spread.

“People protested and brought down governments before Facebook was invented. They did it before the internet came along,” Malcolm Gladwell wrote in New Yorker magazine.

True. But the fact that you need to remind people about this says a lot about the power of the social media which helped oust a dictator entrenched in power for 30 years within 18 days.