Iran’s election last week could be a turning point for the nation. On June 12, the nation held its general elections to elect a new president. This happens every four years in Iran just as it does in America. Another surprising similarity is the impact social networks are having on the elections, but in a very different way.

Late last month the ruling government under the leadership of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blocked Facebook inside the country. The block was noticed after rival candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi started a Facebook page to generate support for himself and his party. The Facebook page had only 5,000 supporters when Facebook was banned. (more…)

User-generated content (UGC) may be the best example of freedom of speech there is. This may be the reason why social network Plurk was recently banned in China. Plurk is a micro-blogging website that works a lot like Twitter. Users sign in and post short updates with a maximum of 140 characters. The website never really caught on in North America as it did in other parts of the world.  Asian countries Indonesia, Taiwan and the Philippines make up the top three countries for user concentration.

In North America and most other places in the world websites like Veoh, Bebo, Twitter, and Flickr are very common and no one outside the advertising community cares when a user logs on to the websites. However, sites like these are considered a threat by the Chinese government because they allow for the free flow of information and ideas. (more…)