Ron Schenone

Twitter Cancels Maintance To Support Revolution In Iran

Posted by on Jun 16, 2009 | 4 Comments

As the situation in Iran continues to play out, and as the people of Iran continue to use Twitter to plan their protests, Twitter has canceled their scheduled maintenance. According to the Twitter blog they stated that they realize their role in the protest going on in Iran and feel an obligation to stay online during these trying times.

In a blog post Twitter states that:

Down Time Rescheduled

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. Tonight’s planned maintenance has been rescheduled to tomorrow between 2-3p PST (1:30a in Iran).

Our partners are taking a huge risk not just for Twitter but also the other services they support worldwide—we commend them for being flexible in what is essentially an inflexible situation. We chose NTT America Enterprise Hosting Services early last year specifically because of their impeccable history of reliability and global perspective. Today’s decision and actions continue to prove why NTT America is such a powerful partner for Twitter.

So it seems that the social networking site is taking on a new role in world affairs.

Source

  • mhz

    Wow. I just hope that China doesn’t hear about it. Or else they will be sure to block Twitter.

    (maybe they already do…)

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  • http://ictheworld.wordpress.com Hotrao

    This is important because testifies the role new communication channels, and among them Twitter, play within our society at this days. This reminds me the role some big technologic breakthroughs had in last three decades (remember fax, sms, Cell phones,…).

    And at same time the consciousness of the role achieved by those who run these medias.

    On the other side, what makes this achievement taste a little bitter is the fact that they needed to tell us the fact. Seems to me like making charity and going in the streets saying “hey I’m charitable”.