Buck, a journalism graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, was in Egypt for a school research project, ironically focused on bloggers and journalists who use tools like Twitter to keep in step with news, when Egyptian authorities arrested him.    The authorities claimed that Buck may have been inciting a riot; although, Buck was merely photographing a labor rally near a textile mill in Mahalla, Egypt.

Buck reached Twitter through his cell phone, allowing him to make the post without being detected by authorities. Twitter allows its users to post 140 character or less messages, providing a place on the Web for people to be constantly updated in brief, to-the-point blogposts.

Thanks to the Tweet post relaying his arrest, Buck was able to reach his friends via the Web, who contacted the U.S. Embassy and UC Berkeley, eventually sending a lawyer to bail him out of jail.

Buck says keeping in contact with the rest of the world via the Web and his Twitter posts kept him sane, curbed the fear that he would “fall into a black whole” and potentially saved his life.  Buck said that he “came to realize how important a tool like Twitter is.”

If you can’t find a place for another social networking site in your connection overloaded life, this story should demonstrate how Twitter is a valuable online resource.   Tweet posts come in pretty handy in emergency situations, from connecting people online after minor earthquakes in the California to proving its worth internationally by rescuing a jailed journalist.