Can Governments Really 'Block' Twitter?

This week, Egypt became the latest Middle Eastern country to see massive anti-government street demonstrations. As in Tunisia earlier this month and Iran last year, activists have made heavy use of social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook -- and the Egyptian regime has responded harshly. On Jan. 25, Twitter officially confirmed reports that access to its site had been blocked. Is it really possible to do that? Yes, but not very effectively. Unfortunately for the censors, Twitter allows other companies to develop their own applications using its programming interface. This has led to the development of a plethora of tools that allow users to post to Twitter without ever pointing their browsers to Twitter.com. These third-party clients still appear to be functioning in Egypt. There have even been reports of activists updating Twitter through the professional résumé-sharing site LinkedIn.