It started with a single tip, emailed to a single website.

Day One - Sunday, February 15th

The Consumerist, a consumer advocacy website, posted an article entitled Facebook's New Terms of Service - 'We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content, Forever.' The article was picked up by several other blogs and found its way quickly to Twitter, where it quickly was assigned the #facebooktos and #tos hashtags.

Some twitterers swore to delete their Facebook accounts, others swore to create Anti-TOS Groups on Facebook (I chose to boycott Facebook completely). By and large, most of the Twitter commentary was overwhelmingly negative, with a few die-hard Facebook Advocates (like Mari Smith) defending Facebook. By the end of Day 1, #tos and #facebooktos were some of the top trending topics on Twitter.

Day Two - Monday, February 16th

On Monday, the news went mainstream, powered by a torrent of prominent Twitterers and their blogs. The Consumerist's article went viral, achieving several thousand Diggs in a day and several hundred thousand hits to their website. Major news networks like CNN, ABC, and the New York Times reported the Facebook TOS change as "The most twittered event of the day."

Zuckerberg issued a now-infamous post entitled On Facebook, People Own and Control Their Information, which was widely mocked on Twitter for being a "non-apology." Zuckerberg essentially said that Facebook's TOS are excessively complex and formal, and that people shouldn't bother paying much attention to them. The message the Twittersphere heard was "Don't bother with the fine print, just sign on the bottom line."

Two Facebook Anti-TOS groups gained massive followers, jumping into five digits. The organizers of those groups posted semi-hourly progress updates to Twitter, each one making it more likely that Facebook would be forced to formally address complaints.

Facebook invited questions from the Anti-TOS group, but despite promising to do so, made no attempt to answer or even acknowledge most of them.

Day Three - Tuesday, February 17th

The morning news on several major networks opened with news of the Facebook TOS "fiasco," some practically advising Americans to delete their Facebook accounts immediately. The general Facebook populace began a headlong rush to remove embarrassing photos and incriminating private messages, while Twitterers continued to hammer home the point that deletion was no longer an option - Facebook's new TOS specified that Facebook would still retain full, irrevocable distribution rights to deleted content.

Normal, everyday users began to realize that Facebook had truly backed them against the wall, slipping in retroactive TOS changes that removed any control the user had over the distribution of their content. Against this backdrop, Facebook's half-hearted attempts to calm users' fears rang hollow and Twitterers, sensing weakness, closed in for the kill, pushing membership in the #facebookTOS group and posting blow-by-blows of events as they unfolded.

The #facebookTOS group grew to more than seventy thousand members, making it one of the fastest-growing Facebook groups ever. Nearly every major media outlet began ongoing coverage of the story, fueling the fire and spurring on privacy advocates.

Then, something strange happened. Late in the day on the 17th, a poll, posted by Facebook itself, showed up on many Facebook users News Feeds, asking if they would like Facebook to revert to the old terms of service. At last glance, 56% of users voted yes, 32% said they didn't know, and only 6% said they didn't want to revert.

Then, something kind of incredible happened.

Day Four - Wednesday, February 18th

Somewhere in the dead of night, early Wednesday, the following message magically appeared on Facebook users' home pages:

The news broke across Twitter like wildfire. Facebook had reverted its Terms of Service. The privacy advocates had won - at least for the short term. Much love was DM'd by all and everyone sat around the campfire, singing Cumbayaa and toasting marshmallows before returning to their usual pastimes of looking for pictures of lolcats and telling each other that they've been pwned!!1!1