Iranian authorities have slowed Internet connections to a crawl or choked them off completely before expected student protests Monday to deny the opposition a vital means of communication.

Twitter gives Iranians a voice, but the government still controls the Internet.

But does the label Twitter Revolution, which has been slapped on the two most recent events, oversell the technology? Skeptics note that only a small number of people used Twitter to organize protests in Iran and that individual text messaging, old-fashioned word of mouth and Farsi-language Web sites were more influential. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/weekinreview/21cohenweb.html

Yet while the Twittering classes were bending over backward to find more information and connect to more people in Iran -- going so far as to provide proxy servers for Iranians being blocked from the Internet -- CNN and other cable news outlets were busy running evergreen documentaries and Larry King reruns. http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/09/06/15/iran-twitter-and-cnn-fail