San Francisco - Social networking site Twitter delayed
planned maintenance to its system Tuesday in a move that it said was
designed to minimize downtime for its users in Iran.
Twitter co-founder Brad Stone announced the move after the trendy
social networking and micro-blogging site became a key conduit of
information for Iranians protesting the contested election results.
The announcement wasn't just a publicity stunt from a site that
was previously best known for updates from celebrities and the often
irrelevant postings of hordes of fans.
In the days since the protests began, Iranians have turned by the
thousands to Twitter as the government seeks to clamp down its
control on other forms of communication. Reports from Iran, many of
them on Twitter, say the government has shut down cell phone
communications and is blocking land lines and text messaging.
Access to many websites also appears to be comprised, but
networking sites like Twitter and Facebook remained accessible as
users connected via proxy servers that hide their destination. It's
not only Twitter that's helping the protestors. One group is even
using Google Maps to show the location of rallies and where the
government is placing tanks and snipers.
Making the impact even more profound was the fact that much of the
mainstream western media failed to properly cover the start of the
protests when they started on Saturday. CNN for example chose to
air a repeat of the Larry King Show instead of covering the start of
the crackdown.
By Monday Twitter was registering over 30 tweets a minute bearing
the term '#iran election' - a tag that allows all postings on that
subject to be easily found. It was easily the most popular subject on
the site.
While talk of a 'Twitter Revolution' in Iran may be exaggerated,
even The New York Times agreed that the site was acting as a 'virtual
media office' for the supporters of opposition candidate Mir-Hossein
Moussavi Hussein Moussavi, who use the site to coordinate protests
and disseminate news.
Among the messages posted Tuesday on the site were 'CONFIRMED!!!
Army moving into Tehran against protesters!', 'tehran is alive with
sound of freedom' and 'all cell networks down in Tehran.'
One of the most prolific posters goes by the name Persiankiwi.
'Attacked in streets by mob on motorbikes with batons - firing guns
into air - street fires all over town - roads closed,' wrote the
anonymous contributor.
With information like that, even the US State Department asked
Twitter to rearrange its maintenance downtime so that it would fall
in the middle of the night in Iran.
Technology analysts were also impressed.
'I think this is Twitter's finest hour,' said Ezra Gottheil, an
analyst at Technology Business Research. 'If anyone in Iran has
access to the Web, they can tell their story. This has made
our world smaller and more personal in a time of great chaos and when
a government is trying to stop communication.'
The rise of Twitter in Iran also reflects a fundamental shift in
the nature of news, according to Caroline Dangson, an analyst with
the technology research firm IDC.
'The situation in Iran is illustrating this phenomenon where
government and media outlets are no longer the gatekeepers to news,'
she told ComputerWorld Magazine. 'The man on the street is now the
reporter in the field covering the situation in Iran thanks to the
penetration of connected devices and availability of social messaging
applications.'
USA
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