VIDEO: Twitter turns green for Iran

By GottaLaff

(click on image to enlarge)

Twitter users have changed their avatars en masse. They've gone green, myself included, for Iran. I've posted the screen grab above to show you what it looks like now, a page awash in shades of emerald:

If you've ever tried to validate Twitter's existence to a bunch of haters who keep insisting that Twitter is full of useless people tweeting about how they're making a sandwich, you now officially have something to shove in their faces. For those of you who don't follow the news, here's a quick recap:

Iran had presidential elections last week. Voter turnout was disproportionately high and final tallies were delivered absurdly quickly, leading many in Iran and abroad to suspect that the election, which went strongly in favor of incumbent Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was rigged. In the days leading up to and immediately after the election, many modes of communication were suspended in Iran, including text messaging, many popular social networking websites and email services, leaving Twitter as one of the only remaining methods of communication.

What followed was the event that may turn out to be the "breaking point" for Twitter, the point where people wake up and realize that it's not about sandwiches. Protesters in Iran supporting the opposition party began to organize via Twitter. Protesters on the ground began to use Twitter to post updates about police reaction to the protests, violence against protesters, and to aggregate content like photos and videos of the protests beyond Iran's borders. When CNN failed to give the Iranian election the attention it deserved, Twitter users bashed the network with the #CNNFail hashtag, which trended on Twitter for an entire day. CNN subsequently revised its coverage [...]

I was asked to post about this by one of my favorite Tweeters. I am happily obliging. Turning Twitter green for a good cause has made us very proud.

H/t: Liberalchiik