• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer, July 22, 2009

Friday could be a big day for Iran, as Shi'ite custom calls for memorial services for those slain 40 days ago. It could also be a big day for Twitter, which showed so much promise during the first burst of revolutionary fervor following the disputed presidential election on June 12 -- but then fell prey to some avoidable shortcomings.

To succeed in attracting users, online communities must recognize and serve a communal need, and Twitter has clearly done that in Iran. In the first days of the June uprising, Western news reports were filled with anecdotes of Web-savvy Iranians coordinating protests via online social networks. The main opposition candidate, Moussavi, was said to be maintaining contact with supporters at least, in part, via Facebook and Twitter.

Twitter was especially useful because the government shut down mobile text messaging in an effort to disrupt dissidents' organization.

Bernardo Attias, chair of the Department of Communication Studies at California State University, Northridge, explained: "Twitter is based on the same model of short messages, but its reach is potentially much greater, thanks to the ability to broadcast short messages to large numbers of followers. These short messages can spread like wildfire."

But at the same time, he added, "It can also lead to problems when the messages contain misinformation -- deliberate or otherwise -- or 'noise.'"

Ironically, the main problem for Twitter as a revolutionary tool wasn't Iran's technophobic gerontocracy, but the crowds of well-intentioned foreign sympathizers who flooded the site with expressions of support.

To its credit the site was able to handle all the traffic -- holding off scheduled maintenance at the request of the White House -- but the outcome was substantially the same. The sheer volume of "moral support" Tweets made it difficult for Iranian dissidents to use the service for actual organizing.

Basically, Twitter's most appealing democratic characteristics -- including its global reach and ease of communication -- ended up working against it. But the game is far from over.

Although the first protests were crushed, the revolutionary movement has proved remarkably durable, with renewed protests culminating last Friday in an open challenge by Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president of Iran. Friday, as the Muslim Sabbath, is always a politically charged day in a theocracy like Iran. But if history is any guide, this Friday -- July 24, the 40th day following the political killings on June 13 -- is particularly ripe for revolution.

Shi'ite Muslims customarily mourn their dead for 40 days, culminating on the 40th day with a public or private ceremony (Arba'een) to commemorate them. Three decades ago, the killing of civilian protesters on Jan. 9, 1978 led to a snowballing cycle of protests, police violence and popular response that swept the nation and brought down the U.S.-backed shah.

Each time the shah's police used deadly force to disperse the crowds, but they only abated temporarily. Each new act of violence (on a non-memorial day) merely added another cycle of memorial protests to the calendar. In the final days of the Islamic Revolution, up to 3 million protesters paralyzed Teheran, joined by millions in other big cities.

Now Iran has a new generation of political martyrs, and as the Iranian regime is rocked by the worst public unrest since the revolution which brought it to power, it's at least plausible there will be a second wave of protests on the 40th day after these killings. While Twitter can't make the revolution, it can make a contribution -- provided users have a strategy.

Aside from simple self-restraint on the part of foreign supporters, Rodney Rumford, the co-founder of Tweet Photo, said users could "group multiple hash tags together for more relevancy and aggregate some of the relevant trending topics, such as: iran, iranelections, iransupport and so on."

Likewise, Attias advised: "Users wishing to use Twitter to complement their organizing strategies could probably cut through the noise with more careful use of hashtags -- the search terms that are highlighted with the '#' in front of them. Specific tags could be associated with specific kinds of information."

But Attias added: "The problem is getting users around the world to use the appropriate tags in a consistent manner -- it's just not going to happen easily." Here Rumford suggested one possible solution: Typically, hashtags are loosely defined and created by the community, but Twitter could give some structure and lead the use of specific hashtags around world events."

Twitter can make disseminating information to the outside world as well. To make things easier for foreign reporters using Twitter to collect information, Rumford suggested that "Twitter could use an editorial level where it highlights reliable news sources or pulls in photos from sites like tweetphoto.com that has geotagging map enabled to confirm location of images taken." Reporters can also help themselves, with Attias advising: "If you know that a specific twitter account is delivering up-to-the-minute accounts of events in the streets of Iran, you can go directly to that user's page when you want to only see those tweets."

Of course, confirming who's who, and who's reliable, "must be organized outside of Twitter, for example, on Web pages of opposition organizations." Attias went on: "This would be especially useful in a situation like the Iran uprising, as there are a large number of Twitter accounts that seem to have been created specifically to spread disinformation that will help the authorities."

And what about marketers "gaming" the system -- for example, the U.K. furniture retailer Habitat, which drew attention to a promotion with strategically-placed Tweets incorporating keywords like "Iran" and "Mousavi." While objectionable, Attias and Rumford both demurred when asked if Twitter should take steps to regulate this sort of activity, noting that the service already provides users with the means to dispose of disingenuous Tweeters.

Rumford observed: "Twitter is effectively self-policing, meaning that if I find someone's Tweets too marketing-centric or salesy, I can just 'unfollow' them. Let's not make this an issue as a organic solution already exists."