"The Icelandic Facebook Revolution"

Here is an excerpt from a blog on Huffington Post by Sigtryggur Magnason.


"...Today, January 22. It's early morning in Iceland, late at night in the US. My Facebook shows people are protesting again today. Recent research shows that 95.8% of Icelanders in the 20-29 age group have their profiles on Facebook. From the age of 13 and up, 46.9% of Icelanders is on Facebook.

Icelanders have been rather frigid when it comes to protesting. We don't have the culture of crowds. There are no subways, no train stations. Our culture of cafes is rather young. The University of Iceland, the biggest university, has until recently been scattered around Reykjavík. Facebook has made a great social impact. The Internet has played a vital role in the 110 days since the crash on October 6th.

People are probably meeting at 10.30am at the Parliament. The messages from the meeting of the Social Democratic Alliance were precise last night. Their chairman and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir, is at a hospital in Sweden being treated for her brain tumour. She'll be back to Iceland tomorrow. Will the party wait for her to break up the coalition with the Independence party or not? Will the government resign?

It's 10am in Reykjavík. It's not bright yet, although the sun is breaking it curfew, staying up for a few minutes longer every day.

Iceland. We've come to a conclusion: the laissez faire experiment has failed. Big time. Our message to the rest of the world is: don't try this at home."