Iran Plugged In

Persian Blogosphere Map

koohestan11 — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 06:53:21 +0000

Harvard’s Berkman Center’s Internet and Democracy Project presents an interactive Iranian blogoshere map.

Facebook is the Social Network of Choice in Iran

koohestan11 — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 06:08:38 +0000

According to this article on TechCrunch, with original source by Vincenzo Cosenza, Facebook is the social network of choice in Iran.

Online Sites Bolster Participation in Elections

koohestan11 — Thu, 28 May 2009 05:44:33 +0000

This great article describes how online sites like Facebook and Twitter are being used by the primary candidates in Iran’s upcoming presidential elections. It appears that candidates like Mir Houssain Mousavi are following the lead of President Barack Obama who successfully used sites like Facebook to grow his campaign. It appears Mousavi is far more high tech than his rival Ahmadinejad.

MSN Messenger Blocked in Iran

koohestan11 — Thu, 28 May 2009 04:52:50 +0000

According to ITP, Microsoft has opted to turn off Windows Live Messenger in Iran, Cuba, Syria, North Korea, and other countries subject to US sanctions.

China is Definitely Plugged In

koohestan11 — Wed, 27 May 2009 06:34:41 +0000

Juicy facts:

China has approximately 14,000,000 domain names registered under “.cn”.
298 million Internet users.
117.6 million out of the current 640 million registered cellphone holders using the Internet on their phones, and 70.8% of those users under 19.
Sites are censored in China.
Having blogs is about five times more popular in China than it is in the US

Source.

Iran Ranks #32

koohestan11 — Mon, 25 May 2009 18:17:38 +0000

According to this article, Iran ranks #32 in the world in terms of number of websites.

Ahmadinejad Launches Online Grassroots Campaign

koohestan11 — Mon, 11 May 2009 20:27:53 +0000

Ahmadinejad supporters have launched a multimedia campaign called Dar Emtedad Mehr (meaning ‘Following Kindness’)covering social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and other online media.
The site offers news updates of Ahmadinejad’s speeches and visits to different cities on YouTube via Twitter, Facebook, or SMS messages. So far less than 15 people have “followed” the Dar Emtedad Mehr campaign on Twitter.

Source.

Top 100 Sites in Iran

koohestan11 — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 17:26:15 +0000

According to Alexa:

Google
Yahoo
Blogfa
Facebook
MihanBlog
YouTube
Blogger
MSN
Cloob
PersianBlog

See the rest of the list here.

Life Goes on in Tehran

koohestan11 — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 01:51:34 +0000

Blogging in Iran is huge. This is probably my most favorite blog:

Life Goes on in Tehran

Mission: To show that regardless of what any president would have you imagine, despite what any media outlet would have you believe, life goes on in Tehran and elsewhere in Iran.

I love the blog format, and the photos are beautiful.

Facebook in Iran

koohestan11 — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 21:00:22 +0000

Facebook and Twitter are the two hottest sites on the Web right now.

Facebook was recently unblocked in Iran, and I know that online social networks are very popular in Iran – like anywhere else in the world. Prior to Facebook, Yahoo 360 and Orkut were huge in Iran.

I will research in depth how popular Facebook is in Iran, but from some initial investigation, I found some initial data:

48,547 people in the “Iran” network (as of today)
Multiple Iranian university networks listed in Facebook. Taking a glance at the Sharif University network, there are 2,346 people.
There appear to be around 10-15 FB applications related to Iran.
How many people are talking about Iran on people’s walls? See here.
“Since Feb 3, Facebook has jumped from the 29th most visited website in Iran to the 12th, according to Alexa” (Source)
A lot of Iranian users use Facebook to support causes, such as making Norooz, the Iranian New Year, part of the UN calendar.

There is a Facebook competitor in Iran, called Cloob, which is very similar to Facebook.