By now if you have not heard that there was an election in Iran, then you have either not been on Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo!, MySpace, Digg, CNN, FoxNews, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, National, local, and international newspapers, and simply been living as a hermit in a long lost case where civilization is the furthest thing from you. But since you are reading this that cannot be the case.
Today, Friday 06/19/09, major companies such as Apple, Google, and Facebook announced support for Persian language. Apple has done this with their SMS’ being possible in Persian, Google Translates to Persian now, and Facebook is available in Persian too. And if you believe that is only company, think again. Twitter rescheduled their maintenance so that the Iranian people inside Iran would have a means to communicate because the government had shut down sms/texting, and disconnected cell phone towers, and kept everything under watch. Even Internet sites are being filtered and censored. With Twitter for example, because their are so many applications using Twitter’s open API, it is extremely difficult to filter those servers because their IP address differs from Twitter’s main IP. In fact, there are countless proxy servers setup out there with people from all over the world assisting in this digital revolution. Regular folks, Americans, Europeans, Japanese, and more are all partaking in the first true digital revolution. And this is all being done through Social Media platform like Twitter, Digg, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and many, many more out there.
To see tweets from inside Iran, you can follow the hottest “trend” on Twitter, or follow two students tweeting from within the country:
twitter.com/change_for_Iran
twitter.com/iranElection
Social Media is not going anywhere, it was indicated with the power of Obama gaining incredible following using these tools, and it is being cemented in the world as not only a cool tool, but as a power changer, as a ways to gain freedom. Through the likes of Twitter and Facebook the world will know that through sheer will of power, anything is possible. Let the dream of unity, the dream of freedom, and the dream of a better tomorrow ring true for the people of Iran, and the rest of the world needing their own CHANGE.