A picture on Twitter shows hands wrapped in a green ribbon forming a heart in support of the defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. /AFP-Yonhap

Iran has banned the international media from covering anti-government protests following a widely contested presidential election, interfering with satellite channels, and blocking websites covering the demonstrations. But online social networking tools are allegedly emerging as the unlikely heroes, with bloggers quick to upload pictures and video clips of the demonstrations. These updates are apparently sent by Iranians via such websites and posted on the homepages of major broadcasting companies in the West.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote a column titled "Virtual Mosque" on Wednesday, asking, "Is Facebook to Iran's Moderate Revolution what the mosque was to Iran's Islamic Revolution?" Twitter supposedly played a role in mobilizing the largest number of people in a rally since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, and communicating with the outside world by feeding live news and video clips from the rally to the rest of the world despite strong state control over media. Twitter connects information scattered around websites such as YouTube, Facebook and Flickr. Iranians post video clips on YouTube and pictures on Flickr, and use Twitter to send the links to other Iranians and those abroad.

"What is fascinating to me is the degree to which in Iran today -- and in Lebanon -- the more secular forces of moderation have used technologies like Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, blogging and text-messaging as their virtual mosque, as the place they can now gather, mobilize, plan, inform and energize their supporters, outside the grip of the state," Friedman claimed.