Media News - Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Twitter delays maintenance amid online revolution

The Obama administration took the unusual step of asking Twitter to delay a planned maintenance outage because of the social blogging site's use as a communications tool by Iranians following their disputed election, a senior official said Tuesday. The request highlighted the administration's Web-savvy ways and the power of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook in organizing protests over the election results in the face of a ban by Iranian authorities on other media. But it also seemed to run counter to President Barack Obama's public efforts not to appear to be meddling in Iran's internal affairs. Twitter delayed Monday's scheduled tuneup, which would have taken place during daylight hours in Iran, and rescheduled it for Tuesday. The site went down around 5:00 pm (2100 GMT) and was back online about an hour later. The official told reporters on condition of anonymity that Twitter was all the more important because the Iranian government had shut down other websites, cell phones, and newspapers. The US official said he did not know who at the State Department called Twitter but it was not Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Another Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, speaking at a two-day conference in New York on Tuesday about the micro-blogging service, did not mention the State Department request but said Twitter was 'delaying much overdue scheduled downtime so we would not interrupt what's currently unfolding in Iran.' (AFP)

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