How Do You Say "Twitter" In Persian?

News Bits: Twitter Stays Up Due to State Department Request

Written by Erin BarkerWednesday, June 17. 2009 at 11:10 AM EDT

It turns out that when Twitter Inc. delayed its service outage on Monday night to keep lines of communication open for Iranians caught in the post-election controversy, it was because the U.S. State Department asked it to.

"One of the areas where people are able to get out the word is through Twitter," an anonymous senior State Department official told The Washington Post. "They announced they were going to shut down their system for maintenance and we asked them not to."

Though the State Department maintains it's taking a "hands off" approach to the Iranian election drama, it's making sure social-networking sites are able to play their role in the crisis by "advising [them] to make sure their networks stay up and running for Iranians to use them and helping them stay ahead of anyone who would try to shut them down," CNN's Anderson Cooper reports.

However, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone would like to remind us that he is not some government lackey, thank you very much: "It's humbling to think that our two-year old company could be playing such a globally meaningful role that state officials find their way toward highlighting our significance. However, it's important to note that the State Department does not have access to our decision making process," he noted in a blog post.

Meanwhile, the news media also seems to be getting most of their information on the situation from Twitter and other social-networking sites, as journalists are detained or forced out of Iran.

The media "are relying on Iranians and others who are Twittering to get this information out to the mainstream media. A lot of people are coining what is happening in Iran as a Twitter revolution," an Iranian-American activist in Washington told the Post.

Of course, this has prompted some criticism that the media's reports are unreliable.

"So we're getting news on an Iranian revolution and also catching up with high school friends?" Jon Stewart joked on yesterday's episode of The Daily Show (clip below).