Despite being a self-professed non-tweeter with a twitter account, and an avid follower of tweetingtoohard.com, I have been fascinated by Twitter’s role in the disputed Iranian election.

Today, between 2:00–2:01 p.m. eastern standard time—10:30–10:31 local time in Tehran—104 new tweets were added to the #iranelection thread, the primary national news source for Iran since Iranian press coverage was suspended last Friday. Between 2:00–2:10 p.m., 671 tweets were added to #iranelection.

A tweet heard round the world, repurposed by countless major news sources, reads

“We have no national press coverage in Iran, everyone should help spread Mousavi’s message. One Person=One Broadcaster.”

I am excited by the power of a raw human voice without photos, videos or sound clips.

I am excited by the initiative of people to spread the news that is nearly impossible to spread.

I am excited that the rest of the world is listening and taking action.

This is bigger than Iran and the Iranian election.

What does the Iran election mean for the future of social networking?

—Wendy Joan

This entry was posted on Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 3:54 pm and is filed under Web Journalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.