Twitter postpones maintenance because of #iranelection

Pic: Flickr/Mousavi1388
Twitter is one of the means of communication that appears to be playing a revolutionary role in the aftermath of the Iranian elections. Tens of thousands of tweets with the tags #iranelection and #iran are filling the microblogging service as Twitter users inside Iran get news out of the demonstrations and beatings and have their tweets passed on.

One of the big trending topics was also protests about the scheduled maintenance downtime for Twitter which was supposed to be tonight (Pacific time) #nomaintenance. In response Twitter moved the downtime to tomorrow 2-3pm Pacific time which is in the middle of the night Iran time.

Biz Stone of Twitter blogged:

A critical network upgrade must be performed to ensure continued operation of Twitter. In coordination with Twitter, our network host had planned this upgrade for tonight. However, our network partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran.

Kudos to Twitter for this. As pointless as Twitter seems sometimes, this shows two things: One - Twitter's growing importance as an international communication platform and two - its effectiveness as a interactive communication tool.

Comments

[nick]

Iranians to Smash-Up Country Until There is ‘Nothing Left to Rule’

http://cultsha.com/iranians-to-smash-up-country-until-there-is-nothing-left-to-rule/

[damhile]

Fools! My disciple shall rule Iran
and wreak havoc. Armageddon is nigh!

Greetings from,
Beelzebub