As just about everyone reading this likely saw, Twitter was down for a bit today. The maintenance was planned, and was actually postponed from yesterday to allow for the protests flowing over Twitter about the Iranian elections to continue. The downtime today actually took about half as long as expected, and “significantly increased” the service’s network capacity, co-founder Biz Stone writes today.
Stone goes on to give a verbal pat on the back all those involved. But the interesting part of this post comes towards the end, when Stone writes, “However, it’s important to note that the State Department does not have access to our decision making process.”
He mentions this because it’s being reported that the U.S. government asked Twitter to reschedule its downtime to allow the tweets about Iran to keep coming through in the daytime hours there. You’ll notice he doesn’t exactly deny that the government asked for this, or that Twitter complied. And in fact, he links to a story that confirms the State Department did speak to Twitter. Instead, Stone seems to simply be stating that as a general rule, Twitter will not be influenced by government requests — something that is always a touchy subject when it comes to startups that control some of your data.
Stone concludes with, “Nevertheless, we can both agree that the open exchange of information is a positive force in the world.”
An informant told me Even Williams has been personally delivering Tweet on a daily basis to Washington for the last 2 weeks.
That’s actually really cool. Twitter is really becoming a powerful force mainstream.
http://www.traderbots.com
Instead of going completely dark and unreachable, couldn’t they have put up a maintenance screen or something?
Wei—They did have a maintenance screen up, with an estimate on the time the site would be down.
“story” link is broken.
Fixed. Thx.
In the UK Press on Monday there was a report about a guy who had his house burgled, cause he wrote on his Twitter status that he would ‘not be home for another three hours’.
Security Experts are now warning Twitter Users in the UK to stop uploading Tweets which tells potential burglars that you are currently not at home.
Whilst Sites like Twitter and Loopt are great for telling your friends where you are and what you are doing.
There can be a drawback in making your status readily available for the whole general public.
Old Media is already running scared of New Media giants like Twitter and Google.
What we don’t need is Scaremongering Media Reports that highlight the dangers of using New Media.
Tweet with care and attention please!
With all these stories about how Twitter is getting through in Iran and the US government wanting to use it to get the word out about what is going inside Iran… I would think that Iran, like China, would just shut the internet down period.
All this proxy server stuff seems odd to me if you can just turn off everything except the 2 or 3 sites you want up.
Anybody care to explain why they can’t just shut it all down like China?
Yes, if you are going to burgle someone, please don’t use twitter, wait until they announce their vacation on their blog.
I heard that Jack Bauer called Twitter and asked for the delay. Just saying
I heard that too. I also heard Chloe works at Twitter now. I think she has level 5 clearance.
/rolleyes
i’m so glad i’ve never watched that show
LOL me too… but I have to admit it is tempting especially since its on Hulu
http://www.hulu.com/24
Will someone open up a secure port from their Sprint handheld already? The Cisco network is auto-defending, but I only have 5 seconds to up-link the download before the firewall blocks the nano-virus! 6:59:57… 6:59:58… 6:59:59…
This was the first time I wasn’t critical of Twitter going down during the middle of the day. Good move to delay for the sake of Iran.
Maybe Iran should be called Iwalked.
Think about it.
It was good of Twitter to re-schedule the maintenance.
This means twitter is just another weapon of the U.S. government. I don’t see how is this a good thing? What would you think when the same happens with another country you don’t politically support (not likely today but who knows, maybe some other power rules the world in the future)?
No (as less as possible) politics involved in www please!
No, they just block trending topics like #TCOT (Top Conservatives on Twitter).
Same tactics as any other administration, just aimed at US citizens instead.
Just wait until Twitter becomes ‘Too big to fail’ – then Obama will step in and take over, deciding when upgrades happen, when Twitter can go off-line, and even how much Ev and crew get paid…
As odd as that sounds at first, at some point Twitter may be considered an integral part of national infrastructure. And wasn’t there some bill he was trying to pass that would let the government control the internet?
I was hoping that they were going to address the replies issue. I still hope that they do something about it, nobody is really talking about it anymore.
I completely applaud them for delaying the maintenance for the events in Iran. Good move Twitter!
I’m in agreement with serdar’s comment above. I think it’s quite dangerous that Twitter is now involved with the State Department and allowing it to control its ability to be involved in those protests (many people used the site to organize…on BOTH sides of the Iranian elections debate). I wonder what other access to Twitter the government is being made privy to. Scary.
This title is ridiculous link-bait. Is TechCrunch implying that Twitter *is* a “covert government agency”? It certainly doesn’t look like it, and it would be a clearly ludicrous claim.
hey
It’s not fair at all, nobody wants media tool to be in the hands of government or get biased by it. Directly or indirectly it takes away our right to express ourselves. So if what the twitter head says is correct that is a good news and I really hope it remains that way.
Sonal Maheshwari.
Adding up to my previous comment above:
Everybody knows Iran is the opponent if not the enemy of U.S today but its power is not comparable to the enormous economic/political/military/nuclear etc. power of U.S.
Now, guess what U.S. could do to manipulate internet or media in general, if one day a closer and bigger threat comes from some other country.
I sure hope Twitter never becomes subject to the government of any country. Free exchange of information!
Twitter is such an awesome place to meet great people all over the world. You Rock!
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now this is an informative post!
If you would have dug in a bit you would have found out that the good people of Iran asked for the cancellation of the upgrade, and those of us following the happenings RT the request until it became a Twitter meme.
Twitter said that postponing the event would lead to a downtime in Tehran of about 1AM which would be much less disruptive than say 7 PM.
What leads you to believe ANYTHING else. Accusing the owners of Twitter of being GOVT puppets is going to draw more laughter than anything else.
Twitter is like a breath of fresh air on the Social Media scene. I have been on it for just a few weeks now and I have met several interesting people. It is a platform to network with people you would like to meet in real life.
KZ
Tehran, Iran, 16 June 2009. The world is outraged by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s apparently rigged election victory. Recent polling indicates that the results may well be valid, however. Key to understanding what has happened are the ‘Charity’ economics that Ahmadinejad practices. The long term implications mean that military action is more likely, $500 a barrel oil possible and Apocalypse a desired eventuality for powerful extremists in both Iran and Israel.
http://www.econ...igade-16-6.html