Twitter delays maintainence for Iran protests.

When the twitter founders created their simple little messaging service. I doubt they had envisioned that scheduled maintainence could become a international political issue.

However, with scheduled maintenance looming, and the #iranelection protests hitting fever pitch something had to give.

With tweets coming it at over 1/sec with the #iranelection tag users were getting worried that one of the main conduits of information for those in and outside of Iran would be taken away for scheduled maintanence.



The twitter community wouldn't have it. Soon a groundswell of support engulfed the community with #nomaintainence swinging to the top of twitter trends only minutes after it was announced from the @twitter account.

After a few hours of concerted tweeting an retweeting on the #iranelections and #nomaintainence hashtags, reports were filtering through that twitter had postponed the maintainence


"..our network partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran"





That's only three hours from inception to result. It is clear that Twitter and its users has become a powerful tool both for dissemination of information and for helping the service evolve.

We have already seen the pressure that Twitter users have placed on unresponsive mainstream media. Not only as an alternative medium for information, but also to guide the people with the reigns in their grasp.



Good work !