Twitter & Iranian Election

I am sure you all have seen the explosive turn of events happening in Iran after the rigged election by the hard line establishment.

I have been following this all weekend and what has been amazing is the use of twitter by Iranians to do two things:

1. Communicate with the outside world. If you search twitter for #IranElections, you can see the latest messages coming from the frontlines: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23IranElections
2. Mobilize the movement within the country. The Mousavi campaign and the revolutionary leaders have been using twitter to mobilize the events/protests. This has been especially critical because the government shut down mobile networks to prevent mobilization planning.

Additionally, twitter has been powerful in getting mainstream media to cover the true/real story. Twitterers on the streets started using #CNNfail in their tweets and the trend exposed how different CNN's coverage was from what the feet on the street were reporting. Well, the crowds have spoken and CNN has adjusted coverage accordingly throughout the weekend.

It seems that the Mousavi camp learned a lot from the Obama campaign and the use of social media to mobilize movements.