Twitter delayed upgrade to help Iran protestors

Twitter is increasingly being used as a news service

Twitter has admitted to collaborating with the US government and delaying site maintenance in order to help protestors in Iran.

Reports in June claimed that Twitter had delayed technical work on the site so that Iranians were able to tweet about the violence following the elections.

Twitter co-founder and chief executive Evan Williams has now confirmed in an interview on the BBC's Newsnight that the company worked with network providers to delay the maintenance.

"We had scheduled maintenance work that would have been in the middle of the night or during off peak hours for us, but happened to be a very key time in Iran and so we put it off for a day," Williams said.

"Many people asked us to do that, including someone from the US state department, but that is not why we did it. We did it because we thought it was the best thing for supporting the information flow [in Iran] at the time, and that is what we are about: supporting the open exchange of information. It seemed the right thing to do."

Williams also discussed other controversial issues, such as Archbishop Vincent Nichols' suggestion that Twitter dehumanises social life, insisting that such comments stem from being unfamiliar with the service.

"It is about humans connecting with each other in ways they couldn't otherwise. It is the opposite of dehumanising as far as I am concerned," he said.

Williams also pointed to Twitter's increasing use of account verification techniques, claiming that he sometimes speaks to famous people himself, such as Demi Moore, to verify their accounts personally.

In separate news, Twitter is facing a legal action for patent infringement filed by TechRadium, a company that specialises in emergency response systems. The patent covers a digital notification and response system.

TechRadium's customers, who pay a fee to use the service, have threatened to defect to Twitter to deliver alerts because it offers basically the same service for free.