NEW YORK - THE Obama administration took the unusual step of asking Twitter to delay a planned maintenance outage because of the social blogging site's use as a communications tool by Iranians following their disputed election, a senior official said Tuesday.

The request highlighted the administration's Web-savvy ways and the power of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook in organizing protests over the election results in the face of a ban by Iranian authorities on other media.

Iranians using British software to crash official websites: TV LONDON - A BRITISH web designer claimed on Tuesday that an application he developed is being used by opponents of recently re-elected President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad to crash official websites in Iran. Ryan Kelly developed the software to automatically refresh websites such as eBay, but told Channel Four News he had received emails from Iranians saying they were using it to bombard official websites with hits, making them crash. ... more New media echoes battle cries PROTESTORS in Iran on Monday used Twitter for battle cries and to spread word about clashes with police and supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Messages posted on the micro-blogging service, some with links to pictures, streamed from Iran despite reported efforts by authorities there to block news of protests over Ahmadinejad's claim of having been fairly re-elected. ... more

But it also seemed to run counter to President Barack Obama's public efforts not to appear to be meddling in Iran's internal affairs.

Twitter delayed Monday's scheduled tuneup, which would have taken place during daylight hours in Iran, and rescheduled it for Tuesday. The site went down around 5pm (5am Singapore time) and was back online about an hour later.

A State Department official in Washington said Twitter had been asked to delay Monday's shutdown because the micro-blogging service was being used as 'an important means of communications' in Iran.

The official told reporters on condition of anonymity that Twitter was all the more important because the Iranian government had shut down other websites, cell phones, and newspapers.

'One of the areas where people are able to get out the word is through Twitter,' the official said. 'They announced they were going to shut down their system for maintenance and we asked them not to.' The US official said he did not know who at the State Department called Twitter but it was not Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in a blog post that Twitter had delayed plans to temporarily shut down the service for 'critical' maintenance but did not mention any State Department intervention.

Another Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, speaking at a two-day conference in New York on Tuesday about the micro-blogging service, did not mention the State Department request but said Twitter was 'delaying much overdue scheduled downtime so we would not interrupt what's currently unfolding in Iran.'

Mr Dorsey described the usage of Twitter by Iranians as 'amazing.' 'Just think about what's occurring over there and the accessibility that we all have to see this unfold in real time,' he said. 'It's amazing. It's huge.' -- AFP