Last week, I started drafting this blog about how the business landscape needs to be flexible enough to cope with the changing needs of consumers worldwide. As I wrote, I had one eye on the news channel, watching events unfold in my home country of Egypt and tracking how Egyptian youth were managing to change the whole landscape of a political regime. What had taken deep root over the past 30 years was being wiped out in a 12-day span.

We all know that the union of the telecommunications industry and the internet industry resulted in a major transformation of the established business landscape and communication channels, creating opportunities and threats for mature players and new entrants. By 2014, over 400 million of the world's internet users will access the network solely through a mobile connection (Source: Cisco, February 2010). Mobile web usage grew 110% in the US and 148% worldwide last year (Source: Quantcast, January 2010 as measured in page views).

And that's when it hit me; it's not only business models that need to be flexible enough to cope with consumers. Political regimes, constitutions and country leaders now have to build into their agendas the effect of mobile data and technology on the people they govern. Internal affairs of the Egyptian nation, in a matter of minutes, became an international debate leading to…revolution.

Believe it or not, the Egyptian revolution started on a Facebook page partly organized by Wael Ghonim, Google's regional marketing manager for the Middle East. It called for all youth in Egypt to participate in a peaceful demonstration on the 25th of January. It was an invitation to speak out on country issues ranging from economic and educational challenges to media freedom and political reform. Within a few days the number of participants on the page had grown into the hundreds of thousands. One event led to another, and soon millions of citizens were out on the streets. And I was sitting here in Dubai, receiving second-by-second live updates from the demonstrations through the Facebook page and its Twitter account.

Freedom of speech and the right to assemble have been limited in Egypt since the 1981 rule by Hosni Mubarak's National Democratic Party under a permanent state-of-emergency law. Social media and communication shook the existence of the Egyptian Government to the extent that the internet, SMS, Blackberry services and mobile networks were all shut down by the 28th of January. Immediately Egyptians deemed it the "Day of Wrath," as millions gathered in Cairo's main square to convey their fury over the clear assault on freedom of speech and the grave underestimation the people's will.

On the 30th of January, just two days after Egypt was intentionally isolated from the rest of the world, Twitter engineers have helped Google launch a special service to allow people in Egypt to send Twitter messages by dialing a phone number and leaving a voice message to get their voices out to the world. Next time I'm talking to a client about "empowering your consumers," I am definitely going to use this example.

Finally, after exactly 18 days of on the ground and online protests, President Mubarak stepped down and handed over the country to the Egyptian Army. The path is unclear, but it sure is optimistic. Regardless of immediate outcomes, it is certain that Egypt after 25 January will not return to Egypt before 25 January—thanks in great part to social media.

I guess my message here is quite simple: Never underestimate the power of a Facebook poke!