Twitter Revolution?

From the NY Times Lede Blog: a source in Tehran told us that of 20 people surveyed at a large opposition rally in south Tehran last Thursday, not one of them said they had heard about it through Twitter. For all the discussion by bloggers and journalists outside Iran of the way the micro-blogging service has helped to inform the rest of the world about opposition protests over the past two weeks, the tool seems to have been less important inside Iran, where many people have heard about rallies through text messaging on cellphones or simple word of mouth.

Still, since so many bloggers and journalists have been glued to Twitter feeds that appear to be coming from inside Iran, it is interesting to read this analysis by a company called Sysomos, which concluded that, of Iran’s 65 million citizens, “there are now 19,235 Twitter users in Iran, compared with 8,654 in mid-May.”

Update | 6:18 p.m. In many of the video clips and photographs we’ve seen over the past two weeks from Iran, opposition protesters could be seen using their mobile phones to document the events they were taking part in. Obviously this has helped fill the void created by the Iranian government’s decision to restrict the work of foreign news organizatinos, b ut it may have another consequence.

Over the past several days we have seen posts from Iranian bloggers who are worried that the authorities there have been tapping their mobile phones to discover their plans. On Monday, in  this BBC video report, Rory Cellen-Jones explains that “the Iranian regime has invested in sophisticated technology which allows it to monitor and intercept what is said on mobile phones.”