Anyone from Iran please feel free to contact me!!!! I will be praying for freedom!!!be safe!!!!

I pray for the people of Iran, may you get the freedom you deserve!!!!

shame on you people? letting the dialog end so qwickly[yes mty spelling _-_-'s , u still get the point!}

Hey, Pissed Off American: While you make fun of Bob Sullivan for not being able to adequately proofread his own material, let me point out the following:

MSN is singular - therefore it should be up to its own tricks, not their own tricks;
Note the spelling of perceive (remember I before E except after C), not percieve;
The word is incompetent, not incompetant;
The word is pathetic, not pethetic;
En masse is two words, not one (enmasse); and
The word is beggar, not begger.

So, "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." (King James Bible).

What is happening now in Iran, you have to go back to Jimmy Carter. Instead of helping the Iranian people go to a democratic society and ease out the Shah of Iran, he allowed complete chaos then his policies are not coming back to haunt not only the Iranians but the whole world and it is happening now. I am fearful that Obama is following in Carter's footsteps. As we saw in China opposition to democracy is easily crushed with tanks.

The "green" party Iranians have more guts than we Dems did after Election 2000. Good luck to Mousasavi's group, the rest of us here should be chagrined!

I don't see any corrolaries to the US 2000 election.

Email is private...an exchange between only the sender and the recipients. Twitter is public for all the world to see. The MSM will adjust.

CNN is already doing so by incorporating twitter, facebook & myspace into Rick Sanchez's hour, and text messaging into AC360. Also it's ireport website is another way it has tapped into the wealth of primary source material via new media. I prefer MSNBC for political commentary, but y'all need to get with the times. :)

Mr. Hero HAS displayed his stupidity.

"The benefit of technology is NOT in what it lets people accomplish, but in how it improves the character of people."

This is an outgrowth of (Arthur) Clarke's Third Law in which "Any sufficiently advanced technology will appear as magic."

Or appear as moronic Truth in Mr. Hero's case.

Mr. Hero probably believes that Saddam DID have Weapons of Mass Destruction in 2003 AND Saddam was working with Al Queda, and that Bristol Palin is still a virgin.

(He started the insults, not me.)

Wow! Imagine if they'd had twitter at Tienemen square, or in Nazi Germany. Anne Frank could have been read in real time! What a tremendous gift to the people of the world that there is a way to immediately expose the oppressive tactics of their governments! So much for silencing the masses!

Okay, I'll admit it I thought Twitter was dumb but that's only because I associate it with that goofball Ashton Kutcher. But this is pretty freaking cool.

With that said, people need to really understand who Moussavi is before they get too excited. He may be "better" than the current President but he's not exactly going to be the US's BBF in the region if he were to take the presidency. Besides Khameni is the real power in Iran.

we all need to remeber the key ingredient.
"perception"
Only beleive 50% of what you see.
And 50% of what you hear.

Thank god Iranians have access to this one way of getting the message out there. I am also fed up with
people like P.O.'ed MORON,YOU LOST THE ELECTION,there is NO reason for Americans to rise up against a legally elected government just because some loser like you can't deal the fact that Americans rejected your ideology.

To Pissed off American,

I agree with you completely. We should have taken back our country during the bush years. Where were you neocons when Bush sent thousands of US soldiers in Iraq based on a lie? Where were you when Haliburton was raking billions of dollars from the US Taxpayers when Bush said that IRAQI oil will pay for iraq's infrastructure?

Where were you when BUSH put us into trillions in deficit? I realize that once an ignorant neocon will always be an ignorant neocon, and hypocritical to boot :-)

This article highlights the main difference between the Iranian elections and the US elections of 2000. Controversial as the US elections were, no attempt to censor media/internet or crack down on protestors by the US gov't was ever made back then. Could this fact alone (i.e. uncensored freedom of press, assembly, and public expression) explain why authoritarian, censor-happy regimes experience more massive, destablizing forms of revolt/protest than non-authoritarian? (Think former Soviet blocs and Tiananmen Square)

You know what is even more resistant to censorship? Email.

If people want to get 'the word out' they can just email bloggers and normal journalists.

The advantage being they can actually send informative and substantiative posts. The world's spam industry is proof that stopping it is all but impossible.

Yet another twitterpated media hype for a largely pointless tool.

"That was a terrible thing that happened in the political arena in the Iran election, but it is no different than what happen in the USA election some eight years ago."

WOW,....Margaret,.......bless your heart.
P.S. Nice three wolve moon T

Technology that spreads information quickly is always good news for democracy.

I am proud to become an Iranian by setting my Twitter time zone and location to Tehran. If this helps even one Iranian citizen get the truth to the rest of the world outside of their police state, it's worth it and the least I can do. The Iranian president is a bully par excellence. He needs to take his place next to Sadam H.

I've been writing on my blog page in leading papers and social webs,Buzz,newsvine,Digg,that it's unwise for Irani leadership and rulers to try to gag people's voice in the current flux of media and technology.If they are right,probe by Guardian Council will prove it,meanwhile they should let the steam be out

The figures for people with Twitter accounts inside Iran is not going to be accurate because everyone has been asked to set their accounts as a Tehran timezone to confuse the regime looking for these Freedom Twitters

It appears that there is no longer a choice for totalitarian governments in regards to free speech now. It is a fortunate time for us all when the annals of history will no longer be subjugated to rewriting by the oppressive few who think they have the power.

Several years ago, an Iranian friend of mine at Wayne State College told me the following:"We don't want to be ruled by clerics, we want to wear American clothes and listen to american music at clubs. We will have a change of government in due time, but we will do it. We do not want the Americans help."

TWITTER IS ABSOLUTELY A HYPED PILE OF ####. WHO GIVES A FLYING #### ABOUT TWITTER OTHER THAN THE DORKS THAT WANT TO MAKE IT BIG TO CASH IN. HEY TWITTER! READ BETWEEN THE LINES!

I am proud to be a new iranian on twitter

R smith Gloucester of NJ, made a great point about we the people do not matter. That is so correct and has been since the beginning of time. We do not matter, the only thing that matters is what the government says must happen in all county, we still do not have freedom of speech the way freedom of speech is suppose to be and what it really means to have freedom of speech. Freedom of speech mean that you should be able to stand up for whatever, you believe in without a fight with the government. Instead if we say to much then we are arrested and thrown in jail. What kind of freedom is that in any country? The governments or should I say the leaders of all countries,are forgetting that the people are the ones who has voted them in at the beginning. Why forget the people after you are in position?

What these folks need is the "Bill of Rights," the great gift the Founding Fathers gave to America and to the entire world.

Download free copies of the "Refrigerator Door Bill of Rights" at www.National-Education-Project.org.

Have your kids sign it, add their school picture, and post it on your refrigerator door (hence, the name).

Or send it to anyone you wish, anywhere.

The liberties of the people. That is, all the people of the world.

Free.

just another reason for me to love twitter :)
change your picture to green to support the iranian people!

love free speech

Usually, when I see an article about Twitter, I just roll my eyes and click off the page.

But I have to pop the balloon of hope for people who think Iran will finally be free. None of this is going to work. Ahmadinejad is president FOR LIFE and he'll stop at nothing to keep power. There's nothing short of an armed revolution that will accomplish freedom for the Iranian people.

to Margeret Taylor, if you think what is occuring in Iran today is no different than the 2000 election you are utterly clueless. No wonder so many of the ideas and commentary coming from the left are so off base as to be useless in the real world. Apparently, you don't live in the real world.....

I tried Twitter last night - it's way too abstract for me. The equivalent of 'channel surfing' with no real threads to follow, might appeal to ADD teenagers and video game addicts. No wonder most people who sign up stop using it within 90 days. I was finished with it after ten minutes.

just think, if twitter was used during China's Tianenman Square revolt maybe the communist gov wouldn't still be around.

God Bless the PEOPLE of Iran and I hope they can resolve their problem without resorting to more bloodshed. The US needs to stay out of it and let the Iranians handle their own country. It is ok to support the movement but we cannot be seen as interfering. It will only hinder our ability to deal with whatever government they end up with. If their gov't wants to be perceived as anywhere near fair,(even for their own ends) they will allow the revote.

I had heard about Twitter from friends but had never used it. I've recently moved to Iran from California. As you may know, we have had our Text messaging service stopped. And most websites such as Facebook are blocked and foreign media has been forbidden to cover our struggles. Our cell phones are out of service for most of the afternoons. The internet service has been slowed down so that most of the day it is impossible to go to any website. My internet provider explained that this has been done by the government and its not due to heavy use as Rush Limbaugh suggests.
It feels like the Twilight Zone and it is scary that in this day and age 70 million people can be shut out from the rest of the world. And its scary to think that what is going on here will not be reported to the rest of the world.
I am so thrilled about Twitter and I can't wait to tell everyone about it. To those who have changed their time zones to protect free speech, I thank you!

What is Jym Allyn talking about? This guy sounds like a 10 year old. I hope he never posts again.

"Technology is the use of increasingly accurate, self-evident, and reproducible information to replace energy and matter."

Your so smart and we all wish we were like you Jym. LAME!!!!!!

Iranian Twittering sure beats Chinese Faxing for
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

Long live Twitter! If only we'd had it in Chicago in 1968. . .

I see that MSN is up to their old tricks again. Funny how Bob Sullivan is supposed to be an award winning journalist, yet he sure has a hard time proof-reading his own material. Not to mention that he has single-handedly assisted the Iran Gov't in understanding how to shut down the internet.

And then you have the great liberal media relying, once again, on unsubstantiated sources to deliver what they percieve to be the truth. Just shows you once again how lazy, incompetant, and down right pethetic journalism has become.

I truly hope that the people of Iran take back their government from the dictator that is currently in office. My only question? How is it that every other country can stand-up and not only demand their rights, but actually march enmasse to accomplish the result that they are after, yet Americans are too damn content on being sheep! We currently have much worse problems than Iran, and we are doing nothing!

Why are we not taking back our government from the lobbyists, crooked politicians, and the rest of those on Capitol Hill that have degraded and harmed our country? Because most Americans are beggers!!! They proved that when they elected Super 'O'. Give me, give me, give me.

I am so incredibly fascinated with the events that have been unfolding. I feel like I'm watching the very beginning of Iran's 1776. Perhaps that is a stretch, however, I feel for the people and my heart, spirit and prayers are with them!

I am an Argentine Immigrant who's Country goes through uprisings and revolutions all the time. It's an Argentine tradition really. It makes me so incredibly proud of those in Iran who no longer can be repressed. Their courage seems absolutely unbreakable. If given the chance, I would peacefully protest with them. God bless the true hearted Iranian people! GO GREEN! Praise God!

Please give them hope hope to live and be happy give them a chance at life let us help them let us not just stand like nothing is happening if it was us we would be asking for help to all that can help us!

That was a terrible thing that happened in the political arena in the Iran election, but it is no different than what happen in the USA election some eight years ago. So I don't know why so many people are upset with the new commander in chief because he chooses to let this play out instead of going into something that could cause a world war 4 for every one in and around the world. When the right time comes, this situation in Iran will be dealt with in the right way.

World War 4.........did i sleep through world war 3?

Given the way Twitter works, how on earth would Business Week know how many use Twitter in Iran? MSM makes noise about 'verifying sources' but reporters pull total BS off the top of their heads (or fron other body parts) and report it as settled truth.

I pooh-poohed Twitter as a flash in the pan. Now I'm glad it's around! That's pretty cool.

I never got into Twitter because I think I had a use for it. The situation in Iran suggests a value I don't even think the creators had in mind--a point of immediate contact in the event of an emergency that doesn't go through regular telecommunications channels.

It might prove handy to have in an emergency, provided you've got friends on the outside who are wired. Something to think about, considering hurricane season is about to pick up...

(Not a plant, in case anyone was wondering...)

The most important part of this report is the use of apparently. With one major US news organization encouraging the use of unverified information sources, it is extremely dangerous to believe that this is future of news. Remember that organization also printed the premature illness of Steve Jobs as a result of an unverified source causing the market to react negatively. Who's to say that the majority of these so-called eyewitness accounts are not being generated form outside Iran.

Looks like we have found a new way for the citizens of the world to comunicate regardless of what country is oppressing them. Twitter may just be a huge tool for the liberation of people everywhere...Ever here the term "Free as a bird"? tweet tweet!

I hear a lot about Twitter but not sure what it really is and what function it serves. What, exactly, is Twitter?

Ingenuity at its best!

While it is great to lay blame and is also very plausible that the Iranian government is throttling the internet connection in and out of Iran, it is also possible that bloggers, surfers, news sites, etc are using a large portion of the bandwidth due to the state of affairs which is causing the bandwidth log jam. Also, we have redundancy that most countries are still trying to achieve, so we can carry a ton of traffic through our routers where Iran may not be quite up to date on their infrastructure. If you observer the Internet Traffic Report for Tehran, you will see they have been pretty solid with their traffic. ( http://www.internettrafficreport.com/history/308.htm )

I just wanted to point this out as a possible reason other than the government there "throttling" the bandwidth. This is clearly an assumption and does not constitute FACT by any means. Besides, what good would it do to "slow" the truth down. Either way, the truth will get out. Slowing it down doesn't make it go away so anything short of shutting down the main incoming and outgoing internet connection is useless to them.

This is fascinating! I am so happy for the Iranian people that they have access to this technology - I pray that they perservere without much more blood shed.

That was a terrible thing that happened in the political arena in the Iran election, but it is no different than what happen in the USA election some eight years ago. So I don't know why so many people are upset with the new commander in chief because he chooses to let this play out instead of going into something that could cause a world war 4 for every one in and around the world. When the right time comes, this situation in Iran will be dealt with in the right way.

Interesting. A program that neither totalitarian governments or greedy businesses can miss with!!! MORE, MORE, MORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

even a whisper in the dark is better than no voice at all

And why is this an issue? Sounds like the corporations including MSN are afraid of open projects. Welcome to the 21st century.

Thumbs up for a web service that shows the middle finger to censorship

i do not twitter but it is great to know these people have a way to communicate whats going on to the outside world. It is time for us all to know what is going on with each other as we are all mistreated and forgotten by our polititions elected or not we the people do not matter

Technology is the use of increasingly accurate, self-evident, and reproducible information to replace energy and matter. The benefit of technology is NOT in what it lets people accomplish, but in how it improves the character of people.

Hopefully this explanation does not give the Mullahs and their Lackey who happen to know IT a way to shut it down.

Perphaps the Mullahs need to face the fact that this might just be their turn... I do happen to remember the massive demonstrations aganst the Pahlavi Regime in the late 1970's

"BusinessWeek.com reported that there are only about 8,600 Twitter users whose profiles indicate they are from Iran, citing the Toronto-based firm Sysomos.
"
I don't know if You have been following #Iranelection or #GR88 on Twitter, but most of the poeple twitting have changed their time setting and location to Tehran. So have I, living in Sweden ;)

Just should point out BusinessWeek.com may be off with that figure, on Twitter we have been asked to change our location to Tehran to help hide the legitimate bloggers from the Revolutionary Guard. I am in Utah, but I gladly became an honorary Iranian to help protect them.

If you use Twitter...please change your pic green and change your location and timezone to Tehran...protect free speech. God Bless the Iranian people and I pray they will earn their freedoms. I just hope it won't require the blood our great country had to shed to earn our stripes.