Egyptian protesters have openly thanked social media’s role in the revolution against the country’s ruling government.
One protest leader, Wael Ghonim, said he wanted to meet Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and thank him.
"This revolution started online," he said in an interview Friday on CNN. "This revolution started on Facebook."
But as a company, Facebook Inc. – and to a similar extent Twitter Inc. – has taken great pains to appear neutral about the uprisings in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East because taking too much credit could leave the Palo Alto company open to blame or being shut off from other countries.
And that, experts say, would not help its long-term business prospects.
"They don’t want to be put in the position where they are held responsible … if something negative or catastrophic happened," said David Bell, a professor of marketing management at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. "They could be vulnerable to misinformation as well. People could be saying things (on Facebook or Twitter) that are not necessarily true."
Political influence
From the rise of President Obama to the fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Facebook and Twitter have become major conduits for news, information and commentary that united grassroots movements to change and challenge governments.
In 2008, Obama’s successful run for the White House was helped by his campaign’s extensive use of social networking. At the time, Facebook had about 100 million members worldwide, a number that is now estimated at 600 million.
That same year, a young engineer in Colombia mobilized millions of people by starting a Facebook group to protest the rebel group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC.
That call to action "showed how the power of an individual with a single, powerful idea and message can make things happen," said Lafayette social media marketing expert Andy Smith, who with wife Jennifer Aaker co-wrote "The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways to Use Social Media to Drive Social Change."
Twitter, the San Francisco microblogging service with more than 175 million members, played a key role in spreading news of a 2009 post-election protest in Iran. Social networking has also been a force in recent anti-government uprisings in Tunisia and Syria.
But the most dramatic use of social media by anti-government demonstrators came in the past month in Egypt.
Key Facebook page
An anti-Mubarak Facebook page started by Ghonim, a Google Inc. marketing manager in the Middle East, was credited with helping embolden millions of Egyptians to take to the streets to demand that Mubarak step down after three decades of authoritarian rule.
Even when the government made the unprecedented move to shut the country’s Internet connections with the outside world for several days, engineers from Twitter and Mountain View’s Google developed a "Speak-to-Tweet" service, giving people on the inside a way to send voice messages transmitted by Twitter.
Several memorable news photos showed handmade cardboard signs and wall paintings that read "Thank you, Facebook" in Arabic and English.
China concerns
Those photos and stories might not go over well in countries like China, which is seen as a potentially large new market for both Facebook and Twitter. Both are now blocked by the government, although Zuckerberg visited China in December.
"If they want to get into China, then they’d want to get somewhat of a good relationship with the government," said Zsolt Katona, a UC Berkeley Haas School of Business assistant professor who studies social networks.
Meanwhile, governments in Egypt’s neighboring Arab countries might view the "incursion" of Facebook, Twitter and Google as a symbol of U.S. interference in their affairs, said Smith, who runs Vonavona Ventures, a marketing consulting firm.
Also, Smith wondered if that golden feeling about Facebook in Egypt would remain if conditions in the country are worse in two years.
Showing restraint
Therefore, he said Facebook and Twitter executives need to remain circumspect with their public statements about Egypt as they "thread the needle" of international diplomacy.
Facebook – which frequently touts its corporate belief that more communication and social interaction will make the world a better place – has publicized how political groups and elected officials in the United States use the network. The company also has executives based in Washington, D.C.
Yet Facebook has repeatedly fallen back upon one basic, non-inflammatory statement about Egypt, issued when Internet access was cut:
"A world without the Internet is unimaginable. Although the turmoil in Egypt is a matter for the Egyptian people and their government to resolve, limiting Internet access for millions of people is a matter of concern for the global community."
A Facebook spokesman declined to comment further for this story.
Twitter list
Twitter last week posted a staff-picked list of Twitter accounts to follow that provided "perspectives from in and around Egypt."
However, a Twitter representative also declined to comment specifically about Egypt, although he noted that co-founder Biz Stone co-authored a company blog post with a carefully crafted generic message supporting freedom of expression:
"Some Tweets may facilitate positive change in a repressed country, some make us laugh, some make us think, some downright anger a vast majority of users. We don’t always agree with the things people choose to tweet, but we keep the information flowing irrespective of any view we may have about the content."
Americans’ dilemma
Involvement in international affairs has always been a pesky problem for American companies, especially for those that operate on an Internet that reaches into countries that operate under differing social norms and government restrictions.
"When you’re a global organization, the way you operate effectively in the United States may not be the way you can effectively operate in Egypt" or elsewhere, said Bell of the Wharton school. "For some of it, you almost have to figure it out on the fly."
Facebook and Twitter are quickly maturing into corporations that have similar public responsibilities as traditional newspapers because they are both conduits of vital public information and for-profit companies that depend on advertising for revenues.
So, Smith said, "they have to be seen as relatively neutral, but in favor of getting the truth out."
© Benny Evangelista, SFGate
@JodiWonderland
One of the great things about being British is that I have almost no idea who Kim Kardashian might be. It turns out that many Americans aren’t quite sure why she’s famous either.
In the past we’ve discovered that many users are all too willing to share a 
Don’t be surprised if you’re taken to a webpage containing adverts for improving your sexual performance, or a website carrying a malicious Trojan horse, a rogue Facebook application that tricks you into taking a survey, or even a bogus Facebook login page that attempts to phish your password from you.
