Up until this year I have never really expanded my interest in social networking sites, but have been pleasantly surprised at how non-cliche and mindless I had once thought them to be. It's facisnating to see how innovative people have become in finding ways to hit you with any news or information in the fastest and most compact way possible, especially how vital it can in times of urgency. Twitter allows instant alerts coming from multiple sources all at once. You can always find someone who is wondering or knows what you are thinking and discover more about the subject in depth. Thankfully for Iran in it's current time of war,  twitter has become an overwhelmingly crucial source of warnings, secret tatics, and survial skills for it's people.

Fraud swept Iran in their recent election, when “Against expectations from pollsters and pundits alike, Ahmadinejad did surprisingly well in urban areas, including Tehran -- where he is thought to be highly unpopular -- and even Tabriz, the capital city of opposition candidate Mir Hussein Mousavi's native East Azarbaijan province.” Iranians are in total shambles over this staged election and president elect, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not only killing their way of government, but literally murdering it's society. Authority is stealing the people's right to communicate by cutting off phone lines and filtering the internet throughout the whole country. Protesters are enraged by their loss of freedom and the fact that their once theocracy has turned into almost the complete opposite.(theo-craaazy! no?)  Tim O'reily tweets, "Iran will turn into Egypt,"--meaning a regime in which guns, rather than ideas, hold things together behind a façade of politics."

Twitter has been so helpful to the protestors because they have found a way around the system; confusing the government by using tweets since depending on their location their IP adresses are never the same, disabling the government from tracing them. Twitter users report where there are protests going on, information on number of deaths and warnings about police tracking high cell phone use to find internet users. Razzmichi warns his peers through twitter with, “Rumour they are tracking high use of phone lines to find internet users - must move from here now -"

Twitter has definitely provided Iran with more education on their current situation than many of the top news sites. CNN has gained an unfavorable reputation for their lack of coverage on this election and CNNfail.com shows just how much people rank on how illigitamate the so called "go-to" news sites can be." In the case of Iran’s election, Twitter once again served as the lifeline to news and information for a monumental and historical event." - Islamics can site news websites like CnnFail.com with quotes from Islamic leaders, as well as post videos and pictures to spread awareness about the status of their country. The use of hashtags, a.k.a. this thing # in front of a word, a immediate search of every tweet related to the subject. Iranians can find shelter and safety through a few mere key words.

Iranians tweet about Freegate, an anti-censorship website where Iranians can post things with secure and fast Internet access. There is a huge demand for these sites and recently Freegate posted, "We tried to make our service available to Iran users in this special time. But after our Iran traffic reached historical 340 million hits on June 21, traffic grow further. We do not have the resource to handle such load. "The significance of the internet is clear in the numbers. 

Thanks to networking sites like twitter one can feel cool and intellectual by telling peeps they are essentially becoming a journalist of the future.