(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Micro-blogging service Twitter (www.twitter.com) was abuzz with tweets following a hotly disputed weekend presidential election in Iran, causing NTT America (www.nttamerica.com), which provides hosting for Twitter, to delay a critical network upgrade because of Twitter’s important role in bypassing the government’s attempts to silence traditional news reports.
The originally scheduled for Monday evening to make space for traffic increases over the past few months, Twitter requested the network capacity upgrade more than 7,000 miles away from the election at its San Jose facility to be delayed, according to a DatacenterDynamics report. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in a blog post that NTT readily cooperated, having recognized Twitter’s important role in Iran at that time. It postponed the upgrade until Tuesday afternoon.
The re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been questioned by blogs and social networking sites, which have become an important resource on the matter, according to the Washington Post.
While Iran sorts out whether Ahmadinejad or reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi rightly won the election, demonstrations both for the government and against; peaceful and violent; online and off have been gripping Iran and the world.
WHIR editor Liam Eagle goes into great detail about the political significance of Twitter’s to Iran in a feature piece.
