Sadly, the reality is that Twitter was about as important to the revolution as Bill Paxton was to the marines in Aliens. Why? Because ...

During the recent spate of revolutions in the Middle East you couldn't turn on the news without hearing a comment about how important Twitter or Facebook was to the protesters. By the time a former national security advisor suggested nominating Twitter for the Nobel Peace Prize , you probably got the impression that social networking was saving the world.

5 Hardly Anyone in the Middle East Actually Uses Social Networking

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At the height of the 2009 "Twitter Revolution" in Iran, the number of Twitter users reportedly based in Iran was around 20,000. Consider that Iran has a population of 77 million, and that number looks a lot less impressive -- it's a minuscule 0.03 percent; less a revolution than a bake sale.

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Unless the definition of the word "revolution" is "any group of more than two angry people."

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But hell, it's still possible to imagine 20,000 people sparking a regime change ... until you realize that number is also bullshit. The vast majority of them turned out to be people from all around the world who simply changed their Twitter location to "Tehran" in a scheme to confuse the Iranian authorities, whom they apparently thought of as the least competent law enforcement agency since Police Squad. Factor that in, and estimates of the number of active Twitter users in Iran is as low as 1,000 people.

Despite all the news stories about protests being organized through social networking, most demonstrations were arranged through text messaging, word of mouth or the time honored method of "Hey, it sounds like there's a riot happening down the street, let's go check it out."

Via Emiliya_1998

"Could you guys keep it down? I'm trying to sleep."

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Aside from the fact that many protesters don't even have Internet access, social networking is sort of a shitty way to organize. There's no leadership or sense of direction -- just a lot of people screaming about how much they hate the government. And that's just when we try to get a few friends together for a poker night. Attempting to get anything important accomplished multiplies the problem tenfold.