Live From Iran, One Tweet at a Time

Like the Gaza war a few months ago, a fascinating story brimming underneath the upheaval in Iran is the use of Twitter to communicate internally and with the outside world. From Andrew Sullivan:

Mock not. As the regime shut down other forms of communication, Twitter survived. With some remarkable results. Those rooftop chants that were becoming deafening in Tehran? A few hours ago, this concept of resistance was spread by a twitter message. Here's the Twitter from a Moussavi supporter:

ALL internet & mobile networks are cut. We ask everyone in Tehran to go onto their rooftops and shout ALAHO AKBAR in protest #IranElection

For Sullivan, this is a story about freedom. It is about a technology that connects a young generation's desire to grow up outside the bounds of tyranny with the unyielding churn of information to free itself from repression. He writes: "This generation will not bypass existing institutions and methods: look at the record turnout in Iran and the massive mobilization of the young and minority vote in the US. But they will use technology to displace old modes and orders."

Mashable has another side to the story; the power of new forms of real-time, user-generated media to tell a different story - perhaps sometimes a more accurate or representative story - than editorial boards of vetted media institutions.

In a post called "#CNNFail: Twitter Blasts CNN Over Iran Election," Mashable's Pete Cashmere writes about the viral spread of the #cnnfail hashtag, which is being used to represent frustration with CNN's incredible lack of coverage around the protests over the weekend. While it's unlikely that CNN's increased coverage is directly do to their Twitter shamming, it's hard not to recognize how powerful it is to be able to aggregate an alternative voice, particularly one that can so dramatically amplify those speaking from the center of the storm.

For this blog, there is something deeply entrepreneurial about the whole story. Not in the sense of using market mechanisms to achieve something, but in the hunger for newness, the incredible willingness to risk for something better, and the incredible way available resources are tapped to advance a goal.

The Twazzup conversation aggregator platform is being used particularly effectively to put conversation about the elections and protests all in one place. Using a variety of different hashtags and linking out to other key media sources, it's a one stop shop for ground level perspective on things.

The question, in the long run, is what this new powerful technology allows them (whoever 'they' are next) to do to create a better future. Perhaps just as much though, it's if and how 'we' choose to hear them and to respond.