Jeff Bennett's Blog

We have witnessed many events in the last year that were captured by a Twitter user and then shared and distributed around the ecosystem.  I have always been struck by this.   Twitter  is a real time communication platform where one can broadcast to many followers who can then retweet and then you have a huge audience following a new story, event, happening.

We are seeing this play out in Iran right now.  Since the election the government in Iran has clamped down on media and communication.   Kind of odd that this has to happen….was there a problem with the election?  As the Iranian government has imposed these clampdowns Twitter has emerged in some ways as the only manner Iranians can report what is going on and stay connected to the events and happenings of the day.  Another big example of the growing influence and potential power of Twitter.

All online services have to be maintained and sometimes this requires shutting down access.  Twitter has had much work to do with its infrastructure to handle its surge in Internet traffic of late.  Last night Twitter was due to go offline for some maintenance and publicized this as they often do.  There was a outcry that this would be harmful to those in Iran and around the world who were relying on Twitter.  Twitter heard these calls of need and rescheduled this work.  Wow.

Check out Bijan Sabet, Managing Director at Spark Capital who invested in Twitter on Fox News. 

Very interesting usecase for citizen activism…broadcast of real time information…leveraging the power of a network…and a service provider listening to it’s base of users.  Bravo Twitter!