When the Iranian government clamped down on independent media in the wake of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election, Twitter user Allison Gianotto decided to get involved.

"Being fairly connected to the geek community online, I caught a tweet that mentioned that people could help by setting up a proxy server."

In nontechnical terms, Gianotto used Twitter to communicate with others. Together, they set up a system that masked the origin of the communication, allowing Iranians who used it to send and receive Web traffic without being censored.

"The government continued to try to shut these servers out ... and when they did, new servers were set up to keep the flow of communication going. We figured with enough of us out there, it would be enough to keep it going."

Although the media's fascination with Twitter began in late 2008, news organizations have found a new reason to dote on the social blogging service. After a large protest Monday, authorities restricted most journalists from reporting on the scene. They could conduct telephone interviews and take advantage of state media-sponsored opportunities, but many were sent home as their visas weren't renewed.

Twitter, once the realm of techies, found itself thrust into the center of media and world politics.

According to Associated Press reports, even the White House was glued to the screen. Officials' reliance on tweets from Iran was so great that the State Department asked Twitter to hold off on a scheduled outage for maintenance so the information would continue to flow.

On June 12, the first-person accounts of violence in Iran came across in eerily frank, brief bursts from anonymous Twitter accounts such as Change_for_Iran. "Black riot guards with black vans, it's my first time seeing this people, no badges!" later followed by "tear gas" and "my eyes are burning hard to keep them open."

To bring public awareness to the Iranian election, many Twitter users have colored their profile photos green, the color of reform candidate Mir-Hossein Moussavi.

Nathan Bagley, a student at Utah Valley University, whose Robin profile photo (of "Batman" fame) is now colored a vibrant shade of green, sees a silver lining to the Iranian protests.

"It's bittersweet," he said. "It's sad to see and hear about people dying in the streets, but the fact that these people are fighting for something they truly believe in is ... a beautiful thing. It's what our country has been through on several occasions."

Bagley noted the democratizing shift in media. "Often the news sources we trust most are the sources that don't give us all of the information. We're starting to realize that nations in turmoil are more important than which celebrity didn't wear underwear this weekend."

Misty Fowler, a Salt Lake City blogger, has been using Twitter for about six months, but she has noticed a change in tone since the election in Iran. "I see people who normally don't talk much about politics paying attention."

Fowler, whose profile photo is also green, noted that "people who may not have understood the religious conflicts or social disparities there are now getting glimpses ... it's becoming a little more real."

In less than a week, the tone of the social news engine previously known for "ego-blogging" has made a marked shift in perception. Salt Lake City real estate agent Rob Aubrey said that he hasn't followed most of the Iranian election stories, but notices that the social media engine is growing up. "Twitter will gain a lot more maturity because of the Iran situation. The big difference will come from those that think Twitter is just a bunch of noise."

Gianotto echoes Aubrey's sentiment. "The fact that an army of computer geeks working together were able to give a voice back to the Iranian people when the government was working hard to take it away from them is simply incredible, and it really shows how powerful regular people can be when they have a common goal."