I was going through the stats for BreakingTweets.com today, as I often do, and something popped out at me. A huge drop in traffic from Iran.
I took a closer look, paged through past days, and soon learned that's because the site's been blocked in Iran. Here's the details ---
We've been covering developments in Iran since the controversial presidential election on June 12. And we've been getting hundreds of hits from Iran every day...up until Thursday.
On Wednesday, we had our usual hits from Tehran University and other places throughout the country, per host network stats and other information from Google Analytics.
But Thursday, our usual visitors via Google, Twitter, and other sites -- none could get through. The bounce rate all of a sudden began appearing at 100% and time on the site showed as 0:00. This was in contrary to stats for previous days, when the bounce and time numbers were wide-ranging.
The same was true for Friday and Saturday. Though Saturday, one person got through. Network location? Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tehran.
It seems the last article BT posted before the block was this updated timeline of events on Wednesday. Also Wednesday, Poynter wrote this article about Breaking Tweets' coverage of Iran. Coincidence? Who knows.
It feels weird to know my site has been blocked in a foreign country. Even weirder during the current conflict. And I have to admit, it hurts. One reason I've been relentless with the coverage, posting daily updates, is knowing that this information could get to Iran and inform people whose government is hiding critical info. Now, they can't come to BT anymore.
At least Iran can't censor our Twitter account.
I took a closer look, paged through past days, and soon learned that's because the site's been blocked in Iran. Here's the details ---
We've been covering developments in Iran since the controversial presidential election on June 12. And we've been getting hundreds of hits from Iran every day...up until Thursday.
On Wednesday, we had our usual hits from Tehran University and other places throughout the country, per host network stats and other information from Google Analytics.
But Thursday, our usual visitors via Google, Twitter, and other sites -- none could get through. The bounce rate all of a sudden began appearing at 100% and time on the site showed as 0:00. This was in contrary to stats for previous days, when the bounce and time numbers were wide-ranging.
The same was true for Friday and Saturday. Though Saturday, one person got through. Network location? Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tehran.
It seems the last article BT posted before the block was this updated timeline of events on Wednesday. Also Wednesday, Poynter wrote this article about Breaking Tweets' coverage of Iran. Coincidence? Who knows.
It feels weird to know my site has been blocked in a foreign country. Even weirder during the current conflict. And I have to admit, it hurts. One reason I've been relentless with the coverage, posting daily updates, is knowing that this information could get to Iran and inform people whose government is hiding critical info. Now, they can't come to BT anymore.
At least Iran can't censor our Twitter account.
