Has Iran Boosted Twitter's Value?

Reuters The world is raving about the Twitter revolution, but the attention hasn't made the microblog any more profitable. Lucas Conley on how a global news coup won't change Twitter's sticker price.

The world is buzzing about Twitter’s role in Iran, but what kind of impact is the news in Iran having on Twitter?

Last week, the world watched with bated breath as tens of thousands of protesters poured into the streets of Tehran in the wake of Iran’s disputed presidential election. Well, it watched for a couple of days, at least—until Iran cracked down on the media. After that, the world tweeted.

Beyond boosting the site’s profile, drawing in new users, and casting Twitter as a diplomatic hero, the events of the past few weeks have had a number of other benefits. For many of those who saw Twitter as little more than a monument to shrinking attention spans and egocentric navel-gazing, the election in Iran established the site as a valuable and credible medium for news. And despite the influx of traffic, Twitter proved itself technically sound, avoiding major technical failures and keeping downtime to a minimum.

What’s the value-added on a global news coup (and some good mojo from the State Department)? Maybe less than one might think.

In a profound demonstration of the power of social networking, surfers searching “Iran election” turned to Twitter more than any other site on the Web last week. Twenty-five percent had never visited the site before. Twitter’s closest runner up, with 14 percent? Google News. By the middle of the week, the total number of election-related Tweets—averaging 10,000 to 50,000 Tweets an hour, and spiking past 220,000 an hour on June 16—had soared past 1 million, according to Mashable.

Twenty million users strong—and $55 million in debt—the micro-blogging site from San Francisco found itself thrust into the public consciousness after the Iranian government banned all foreign media from reporting on the crisis, deporting and arresting those who disobeyed. After that, CNN, BBC, Al-Jazeera, and virtually every network in the world had no choice but to turn to Twitter, reporting breaking news 140 characters at a time. World, meet Twitter.

“The rampant media attention has helped accelerate the growth curve for Twitter in a way I haven’t seen before,” says comScore’s Andrew Lipman. “Over a course of just a couple of months, Twitter went from 2 million visitors to 4 million, to 9 million, to 17 million. That is literally unprecedented growth for a site that size.”

“Before, the news was all about record growth and Tweeting celebrities,” says Heather Dougherty of Hitwise. “But the election in Iran has excited people because it allows them to talk about Twitter in a more meaningful way.”

There is perhaps no better testament to the profound role Twitter now plays in social and political developments the world over than the news that the U.S. State Department reportedly contacted the company at the height of last week’s protests, requesting that it delay scheduled site maintenance in order to keep open a valuable line of communication in the face of the media blackout. Kudos from the State Department? Talk about one hell of a merit badge.