Iran's "Twitter Revolution" an absolutely Exaggerated affair!

Last year's presidential elections at Iran witnessed a heavy usage of Social Media to create ripple effect among people. This time was called "Twitter Revolution" by experts and media writers. 

Almost an year later, the same people when asked about their feedback on the scenario, say that it was simply an exaggerated affair.

Number of users, as high as that in 5 figures, changed their location to Tehran, under effect of the protests and in order to confuse Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's henchmen.  

A former White House official even suggested Twitter to be rewarded with a Nobel Peace Prize for playing crucial role in crises in Iran.

According to Mr. Hamid Tehrani, the Persian Editor of blogging network "Global Voices", "The West was focused not on the Iranian people but on the role of western technology itself".

Although a much followed Twitter ID "Oxfordgirl" clearly stated that Twitter helped in organising protests because people could tweet about presence of security personnels and road conditions etc, but Mr. Tehrani insists that the reactions were highly exaggerated.

He clearly mentioned an instance where people posted on Twitter about 700,000 people protesting in front of a mosque when only 7,000 people were present in actual.

As per Miss Victoria Grand, YouTube's head of policy and communications, "people were holding their cameras, like guns in their hands" during these politically turbulent times.

The importance of Social Media has been best described not just by the write-ups about them but government's counter-reaction about them. A lot of websites like YouTube and Facebook have been completely banned or filtered in Iran.

Agreed by Tehrani and others, the cornerstone of this revolution is made of "people" and not just technology.

Courtesy: The Guardian

Photograph Courtesy: STH/Reuters