Remember a few weeks ago when we wrote about former Deputy National Security Advisor Mark Pfeifle saying that the founders of Twitter should get the Nobel Peace Prize? Most everyone thought it was just a half-serious comment made on the fly. But it turns out, Pfeifle wasn’t joking. At all.
In an op-ed today in the Christian Science Monitor, Pfeifle lays out exactly why he thinks Twitter should get the prize. His argument is that without Twitter, the world would have had basically no insight into what was going on inside of Iran during the protests that broke out following the country’s controversial election. Specifically, he says that the story of Neda Agha-Soltan, the woman in Iran whose death was captured on video, wouldn’t have gotten out without the aid of Twitter. “Neda became the voice of a movement; Twitter became the megaphone,” is how Pfeifle puts it.
He continues, “When traditional journalists were forced to leave the country, Twitter became a window for the world to view hope, heroism, and horror. It became the assignment desk, the reporter, and the producer. And, because of this, Twitter and its creators are worthy of being considered for the Nobel Peace Prize.”
While the idea of Twitter getting the same prize that Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama and Martin Luther King Jr. have all received may sound utterly absurd, when you think about it, it’s really not that bad of a point. It’s just kind of ridiculous to think of a web startup with that silly of a name getting the prize. But there is no denying the impact Twitter had in spreading information about that situation. Of course, if that spreading of information ends up mattering at all in the long run, is another story.
And, as Ashu points out in the comments, it’s kind of ridiculous that Gandhi never got the award, but Twitter might.
When he originally said it (video embedded below), Pfieifle indicated that Twitter should be considered for the prize because they postponed a planned maintenance to allow the communication surround the Iran situation to continue. Awarding a Nobel Peace Prize for the rescheduling of site maintenance remains absurd. But Pfeifle has a much better argument now.
A Facebook page has also been created to try to get Twitter the prize. Perhaps next year someone can nominate Facebook for hosting the page that helped get Twitter the prize.
[thanks James]
MG …. MK Gandhi did not get the Noble Peace Price .. there was a lot of politics behind that.
http://nobelpri...ndhi/index.html
Ah right, sorry about that. Meant to include Dalai Lama in the title, not Gandhi. Will point that out, thanks.
No worries, we can count the number of Indian’s who won the Noble Prize in one hand
But, it was definitely good to see his name being sub consciously mentioned .
Keep up the good work!!!
Yeah, it’s really pretty crazy that he never got the prize. You think of “peace” and he’s one of the first things you think of.
Twitter should be given nobel prize before fb kills it. Otherwise posthumous nobel also ok.
fb has already reached the top and twitter is still trying to get into the Top10!
Twitter for Nobel…LOL, dont tell me next that Twitter is standing for US Presidency next time…
Glug, glug, glug…
Man, that koolaid sure tastes good!
Anecdotally, excessive consumption of koolaid appears to correlate with a distorted sense of reality. No clinical study has been published to prove or disprove the hypothesis that koolaid causes neurological dysfunction; but prudence would suggest that excessive users abstain or at least attempt to imbibe responsibly.
To use another expression, perhaps this post marks the point where TechCrunch jumped the shark. Or is it the fail whale?
Maybe you should take a relaxing trip to Hastings, Nebraska on August 14-16th for their “Kool-Aid Days” festival. (Hastings is the birthplace of Kool-aid, where I recently attended a conference for College Financial Aid Administrators. They gave out Kool-aid packets and bottled water at the hotel….and for the entertainment, Judson Laipply did his 6 minute “Evolution of Dance” routine in person)
p.s. I didn’t drink the Kool-aid
http://www.kool-aiddays.com/
But it’s too early to suggest noble prize for creating Software/Web or something else related with Computers..
Pathetic.
Going by this reasoning, you should probably give the inventor of the Internet the Nobel Prize. Without him, even Twitter would never have existed.
Who gives a f who invented the net when there’s twitter anyway?
Too late. Al Gore did, in fact, win the Nobel Peace Prize.
@imjamesdavis
MG were you hired specifically to astroturf for twitter? Was that in exchange for techcrunch being made as a suggested twitter account?
I mean seriously if that’s not the case, you should tell Mike to at least spread the twitter stories around to other writers before you ruin you reputation.
Twitter sells, MG knows it and i love him for that.
Btw i think Michael Jackson should get a prize too, dunno what, something to do with children maybe?
FB is sooooo yesterday…
Jeff Goldblum would still be a live today if it wasn’t for Twitter!
ROFL
and Mark Andreessen is the ugliest guy on the planet… no matter how cool he try to look in photos.
Twitter! [fap fap fap fap]
Here is the reason why Twitter should not get the Nobel Peace Prize.
The Twitter guys, no matter how lovely and enlightened they could be, never set out to build Twitter in order to help with the Iranian revolution, nor any revolution for that matter. Ask them and they will agree that they built Twitter because it was a cool idea that was serving their own needs.
So if Twitter indeed made a major difference in the Iranian revolution, a fact that remains to be proven, then it was not as a result of a planned action. Most Nobel Peace Prize winners dedicated their lives to peace, so the result of their actions was not just an unintended side effect. Should we give the Nobel Peace Prize to Steve Jobs because Al Gore used a Macintosh computer to do most of his work? If anyone deserves a Nobel Peace Prize here, it is the men and women who had the biggest impact in building the Internet and the Web, many of whom are still alive.
Mr. Pfeile needs to come back down to Earth (from the Twitter planet, presumably) and realize the enormity of his suggestion.
Maybe it’s time to think about it differently. Remember when Time magazine named “You” the person of the year?
OK, let us *ALL* get the Nobel Peace Prize, then. Honestly, it would be magnificent if we could all deserve it.
actually, considering that it was the people that use Twitter, not Twitter itself that make the events in Iran so wide know, that isn’t a bad idea.
Giving Twitter a Nobel is stupid. They didn’t raise the level of awareness, they just created the ‘product’ people used.
being named person of the year is nowhere near the prestige of the nobel peace prize
Twitter is a platform, not a person dedicating his or her entire life to the good of mankind and helping others. I agree with the premise (the platform let us in) but certainly not the conclusion.
if they try to make the nobel peace prize cool by doing this, then they will lose all respect
@jmdecombe I totally agree with you. It is ridiculous to want to give the Nobel Peace Prize to something that started out simply as a social networking site for the profit of the creators!
Also, when it comes to a controversy like the case of a sports manager’s account being hacked and he threatened to sue Twitter, the creators washed their hands of the case. They said that Twitter is a simple site to update people’s boring thoughts and was being taken too seriously. And now they should be given a Nobel Prize!?!?!
I wanna become a twitter journalist when I grow up just like MG, with glasses and all.
LOL
You MUST add to that list: SHIRIN EBADI (http://tr.im/rapg), the first Iranian woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize for her human rights and legal work. She was a Supreme Court judge during the Shah’s reign when women had much more power and opportunity.
Wow. I hope Twitter gets it’s much deserved prize. Sure, at first it may seem silly for a tech startup to receive the same prize as these famous historical figures. But, that’s the kind of thing we should learn to expect now a days.
The internet has truly changed our lives and what Twitter has done should pioneer others to do the same. Just how MLK used his powerful speeches as a tool to influence others, the founders of Twitter are using the internet as a tool to accomplish the same thing.
A truly deserving recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize isn’t someone who brings peace to the world, but, instead, someone who leads others to do so.
HA ha ha ha!
You nearly had me there.
Why stop there? Why not give awards to the parents of the guys who invented Twitter?
And the company that created the computers on which the Creators (capital C) coded the site?
And the power companies who gave them the juice to do so?
And the pizza delivery guy who gave them nourishment so they could work without interruption on their solutions for world peace?
And Megan Fox for making us all believe that preternaturally hot babes dig geeks?
And, of course, TechCrunch for continuously reminding us that, of all the engineers and scientists in the world striving to rectify global warming or cure diseases, the only ones who matter are a couple of coders who nonchalantly invented a glorified, spam-ridden telegraph service?
P.S. When did peace come to Iran? I was following all the Michael Jackson tweets and missed the news.
No….Twitter needs to figure out how it can make money!
Well, the Nobel Prize is worth a million. I hear they’re going for an Academy Award next. And maybe Super Bowl MVP. They’re Twitter, and according to TechCrunch, they’re the bestest thing ever…
Until they wind up as the next Friendster.
Perhaps Twitter should be a public service like electricity, water and telcoms.
MG your last line is great
Although Twitter was instrumental in bringing together the Iranians in their opposition to the alleged frauds in elections, I do not think Twitter should get a Nobel Peace Prize. While there was a lot support provided by Twitter for bringing together masses for protests, many times they led to unruly mobs and a state of chaotic anarchy. Furthermore since it has not yet been well established that the elections were rigged, such a move would actually be considered support for a separatist movement.
I wouldn’t also give credit to Twitter for galvanizing world opinion on the issue for the same reason mentioned in the previous paragraph. In fact, I find it quite amusing that so many Americans are “up-in-arms” against unfair elections in Iran (a strategic enemy of US), nobody cares when Saudi Arabia (a US ally) remains a strong monarchy with no elections at all. Awarding Peace Prize to Twitter will only make it blatantly political and severely undermine the credibility of the prize.
well, in all fairness to the premise of the argument, if “You” could be Person of the Year, then no reason why Twitter can’t get a Nobel prize.
“when you think about it, it’s really not that bad of a point.”
It is a ridiculous point, is what it is. Will you please get out of your Twitter bubble? God, the Nobel Peace Prize???
Twitter has saved the world…wow!
No more nukes because of Twitter….!?!
Nobel Peace Prize…So Far
One TC article on the Gartner Hype Cycle and the next one exemplifying the hype part? Or this is another great example of irony? Or does TC do infomercials now?
Amazingly, I was actually pro-Twitter prior to MG’s last article plus this one.
A Facebook page has also been created to try to get Twitter the prize. Perhaps next year someone can nominate Facebook for hosting the page that helped get Twitter the prize.
I like this lol
Twitter – Noble peace prize?
These useless fuckers who come up with these mindless assertions are losing it.
So much innuendo. So little time.
It’s the Nobel Peace Prize, people.
*pause*
The Nobel Peace Prize.
Mandela, Kissinger, Weisel, and Twitter?
All the geeks pat each other on the back for “being part of the movement”, fully embracing the circle jerk as they tint their profile pictures green, but could anyone tell me anything substantial about Mousavi?
Or more to the point, what if the despicable Ahmadinejad had lost? What if that dangerous jackass was using Twitter to rally his supporters? Then, how would we feel about Twitter?
I think Mousavi’s Page on Facebook get’s the word out better than a bunch of geeks on Twitter (and more engagement).
Umm.. no. Please put the bong away.
Sure, give them the same price as it was given to an old lady that spent her life in poverty, in a “slump city”, giving everything to ridiculously poor people…
Please, this is journalism/commentator bullshit…. They desearve a free speech award for sure ‘do
MotherTeresa: RT: OMG twitter for the Nobo! (via @mlk)
DalaiLama: @MotherTeresa wtf is up with the americans? first Gore, now Twits?
mlk: to think that @ghandi never got one!
ghandi: @mlk: http://bit.ly/146VSk pwned!
Geek people are supposed to be intelligent. But they do have bursts of mass idiocy like this.
What did twitter do to iranians? First of all, if anything, they used Facebook much more extensively to get the word out about the protests. Secondly, they would use any medium to let the world know what was happening, even if they had to invent a new TCP application that used 15 satellites. Third, no revolution can be won by painting our avatars green.
If the worldwide community wants to show their support against the oppressive regime running iran, they should give the Prize to the iranian people.
It’s not about the platform, it’s the people. So yes, I do think all the people who are using Twitter to spread news in Iran and elsewhere deserve great acclaim. I think other social entrepreneurs have been using twitter for a while to help better the world. Here’s a great case in point: http://thestimu...m/guy-kawasaki/
Vint Cerf should receive a Nobel Prize before the founders of Twitter. The idea that postponing routine maintenance of a website justifies awarding a nobel prize is absurd.
Maybe give it to the people who died or are now imprisoned to get the information out of Iran through whatever means necessary—but not to people who risked absolutely nothing in a routine IT decision.
Get a grip on your twitter obsession and stop echoing retarded comments by a politician just because they include the word “twitter”.
cheap marketing and PR ploy. Both by the highly esteemed gentleman with the preposterous suggestion, and by TC who will go to any length in order to get people to respond to posts.
But then again, they may well be serious about it. After all, They are American – and belong to the only nation who would think it makes sense to elect Schwarzenegger… and George Bush (both senior and junior) for public offices…
Can you please stop with these BS stories? Twitter in no way shape or form deserves any kind of prize. If anything the Nobel Prize should go to the internet then. This story is moronic and the kind of thing that turns me off to TechCrunch.