Here's a good illustration of what happened:

http://twist.flaptor.com/?span=24&gram=nomaintenance%2C+...

Twitter's impact is mind boggling, although post-Google I should be used to how much and how quickly software can make an impact. You think the developers realized 3 years ago they were creating something that would affect the political situation in Iran? :)

#IranElection brings up a few interesting things in my mind and is an example of how no matter how legitimate an election may be (I have no documentation of election fraud), if there is no trust in the system, people will demand change. Plus, it's interesting that Obama is staying away, as are other arab nations when everyone has been isolated by the current President's regime. Also, I heard comparisons to the beginnings of the Velvet Revolution. On top of this, Iran is supposed to be one of the more democratically liberal nations of the Middle East and the outrage is there. (versus Saudi Arabia, Dubai, etc.)

Ignoring the politics, I'm trying to understand historical significance.

how many times have SF companies planned their maintenance windows around Iran's day... That's got to be a first.

Funny that twitter hasn't been blocked by Iran's government. I wonder if the popularity of twitter's API had any impact on that decision. Because of the API, it'd be almost impossible to completely block the service. There's no shortage of 3rd party URLs that display twitter feeds.

It has been blocked, but the users are using proxies..

And in fact, they are using Twitter to keep up to date on what proxies are working at any given time:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=functioning+iran

It's going to be interesting to see what happens in these stone age regimes when a communications technology or Internet advancement (this may be quite a bit down the road) emerges that cannot be easily or really blocked at all.

They've learned to block facebook, flicker, friendfeed, and text messaging, haven't they? I'm sure they'll learn to block this too.

But by then hopefully technology and people will have moved onto the next new thing...

Interesting to note that in the '79 revolution, people were already finding creative ways to secretly copy and distribute revolutionary literature throughout Iran through spreading the leaders' speeches through letters, phone, cassette tapes etc. Every generation finds some way...

not really surprising, stuff like this is pretty much the only way Twitter can appeal to mainstream.

I even see people calling it the twitter revolution.

I think technology is getting too much credit for this uprising

You're right in that technology hasn't done much to fuel the uprising itself, but with mainstream media outlets utterly failing to do their job, blogs and Twitter have proven to be pretty useful for disseminating information and making the world aware of what's happening.