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An opposition activist spreads word of an upcoming protest in the streets of Tehran. Another posts pictures of clashes between demonstrators and police.

As Iran’s government cracks down on traditional media after the country’s disputed presidential election, tech-savvy Iranians have turned to the microblogging site Twitter.

Its use to organize and send pictures and messages to the outside world - in real time as events unfolded - was a powerful example of how such tools can overcome government attempts at censorship.

"When I’m not connected to Twitter it means that I’m disconnected from the world because the state TV doesn’t report many things!’’ wrote one Twitter user who identifies himself as "hamednz’’ and communicated with The Associated Press through e-mail. His profile says he lives in Rasht, a city to the north of Tehran near the Caspian Sea.

Like all the Twitter users in Iran who agreed to be interviewed for this story, hamednz did not want his identity revealed for fear of retribution from government authorities.

In Iran, as in many still-developing countries, Internet usage is mostly still a phenomenon of the affluent, the youth and city-dwellers. That means Twitter, Facebook and other networks are used mostly by the young and liberal, and may overemphasize their numbers while ignoring the more conservative.

``Because Twitter is still a nascent service the sentiment is likely narrow,’’ Twitter co-founde Biz Stone said in an e-mail Monday to The Associated Press.

``However, we noticed people creating accounts during the riots presumably because they heard Twitter was the most efficient way to discover and share what was happening in the moment,’’ Stone wrote.

Twitter had planned to go down for 90 minutes Monday for maintenance, but rescheduled it citing ``the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran,’’ according to a notice posted on its Web site. The maintenance will instead happen a day later, when it is 1:30 a.m. in Iran.

Iranians must outsmart government blocking to use Twitter, on which users post messages limited to 140 characters called ``tweets.’’

Twitter and other social-networking sites remained blocked Monday in Iran. Users must go to other sites that post tweets for them and allow them to read tweets from others.

Cell phone service, which had been down in the capital since Saturday, was restored Sunday, but Iranians still could not send text messages from their mobile phones.

Twitter has been used as an organizing tool to tell people about upcoming events such as this tweet Monday from a user identified as ``alirezasha:’’ ``today, 4pm a CALM protest with Karoubi and Mousavi/confirmed by Karoubi’s campaign manager and VP.’’

Other users post pictures of protests or what appears to be government authorities chasing and beating protesters.

One Twitter user who identified himself only as Mohsen, speaking to the AP from Tehran, said while he’s been using Twitter for about two years, he’s intensified his ``tweets’’ over the last few days.

He said he sends alerts about ``what I see in the streets, about police hitting people, and people who are not police who are hitting Mir Hossein supporters,’’ he said. ``These are frames of horror and hate. I think one of the strategies the authorities are doing is stopping news and information, and I use whatever I can to stop them from doing that.’’

AP