Anyone with a Twitter account can help Iranians stay safe from the country's Intelligence Ministry.  Since the protests began over alleged election fraud from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's win, the government has cracked down on the amount of information coming out of the country.  This includes banning Facebook and Twitter.  However, crafty Iranians are finding ways around the ban using proxies and other means and sharing information in 140 characters or less.

The biggest way to help Iranians avoid the Intelligence Ministry is to change their time zone to + 3:30 and their location to Tehran or Iran. This makes it difficult for government officials to wade through which users are actually from Iran and which ones are not. It helps keep protesters who are using the service safe for the most part while they keep us updated. It is not foolproof, but every little bit helps at this stage of the revolution. Twitter users from Iran are being questioned, detained and possibly murdered for circumventing the regime and speaking out.

You can also show your support for Iranian democracy by changing your Twitter avatars to green, hosting proxy servers on your web servers and retweeting anonymous updates from Iranians. By sharing information and supporting Iranians this way, Twitter keeps the world up to date on the green revolution in a country where news of the protests is severely limited due to government interference.

Twitter has shown in the case of Iranian protestors that social networking can be an effective tool to not only share news but to bring people together.  Many users are utilized Twitter to share protest information, post pictures from around the country and showcase shocking videos from protest locations.  Many of these videos are graphic, violent and in some cases showing the murder of peaceful protestors.  If anything, Twitter has brought the world community together and they are sharing in the revolution even if they are not there standing side-by-side with the Iranian people.