Twitter has been buzzing with messages regarding the recent Iranian elections and the topic is still among the most highly discussed today. In fact, the subject is of such importance that Twitter rescheduled a planned downtime that was to take place for maintenance purposes. The 90-minute maintenance was scheduled for last night but the team, along with their host, NTT America, decided to postpone it so the protest could continue.

"A critical network upgrade must be performed to ensure continued operation of Twitter. In coordination with Twitter, our network host had planned this upgrade for tonight. However, our network partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran. Tonight's planned maintenance has been rescheduled to tomorrow between 2-3p PST (1:30a in Iran)," wrote Twitter co-founder Biz Stone on the Twitter blog.

The earlier planning meant that the outage would fall conveniently for US citizens, as for them it would have come in the middle of the night, but it would have happened Tuesday morning by Teheran time. The new timing comes during peak hours for the US but at 1:30 a.m. in Iran so Twitter considered that this would be the right choice.

The change may have been influenced by the popular #nomaintenance hashtag that was a top subject for most of the day. While many services are still reportedly blocked in Iran, including Twitter but also Facebook, YouTube, FriendFeed, other social networks as well as news sites and blogs, users have found ways to circumvent the ban mostly by using online proxies. These are also being blocked by the government as they are discovered but so far users have managed to stay one step ahead.

While Twitter can be a useful source of information regarding the elections and their aftermath, many messages are conflicting and don't make for a reliable source. Still, users are being encouraged to share verifiable information like news reports or links to videos or photos.