First the cover of Time magazine and now this: Twitter has been such a fertile source of information from Iran during the election protests that the U.S.state department asked Twitter not to go offline for scheduled maintenance.
Looks like Twitter has officially moved way beyond what you ate for breakfast. Says Mother Jones: "However things turn out in Iran, this will probably be forever known as the Twitter Revolution."
Concurs Clay Shirky at TEDBlog: "This is the first revolution that has been catapulted onto a global stage and transformed by social media." Wait — what exactly did Twitter do? "The Twitter technology added two elements to this," explains Marc Ambinder. "
Number one... by spreading the word about the location of government crackdowns and the threat of machine-gun-wielding soldiers, it probably saved the lives of any number of would-be revolutionaries.
Second, it spread the word internationally." That's especially important when, as Slate reports, Iran is cracking down on foreign journalists, and its military threatened that Web sites and bloggers must remove any materials that "create tension" or face legal action.
Looks like all that's left to ask about Twitter is: now can a brother get a business model? DigitalBeat says, uh, actually more Iranians use Facebook than Twitter.
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