Early adopters of social media technology (read: the same nerds who were sitting up at midnight to get their name in their Facebook URL) are starting to get all verbal-like about their disillusionment with all of the manipulation that is starting to become the normal song and dance on Twitter and Facebook. Like every other media type and media trend, business spammers and celebrity navel gazers are trying to take over, but today the marketing hype and self loving were overshadowed when the infancy of what may become a full-fledged Iranian revolution took on a net life of it’s own.

Even with a suspected black-out in Iran’s internet access, those revolting in Iranian streets are using sites like Twitter and Facebook to communicate with each other about where citizens can find safety and supplies. The revolution is being orchestrated in 140 characters or less, and little computer nerds like me sitting on our couches and watching it are getting goosebumps (like in in the same way hearing a really, really sweet or über romantic proposal story gives you goosebumps).

Shortly after 4:30pm CDT a private list of proxy IP addresses for Iranian citizens (which allow users to mask their location on the web to put it in an uncomplicated nutshell) was compiled and made available by a US Twitter user so that revolutionaries can keep in contact with each other.  It doesn’t stop there either; Twitter was scheduled to go into “maintenance mode” this evening, but the overwhelming outcry from users to delay the outage so they wouldn’t be cutting off Iranian communication prompted Twitter to push their scheduled maintenance outage back one day.

I am going to push my medical-taped glasses up the bridge of my nose and admit that even though I am pretty certain I am the only Melody Meiners running around out there (and scaring the tar out of folks to boot) I definitely registered my name on Facebook, and I have been watching with awe as every silly (and useless) business pimping message and every message condemning social media experts coming form the mouths of those acting like social media experts, was washed away and social media was redeemed today. It’s pretty cool the things that technology can do. So call me a social media nerd if you will, but where were you when the revolution was Twittered, Facebooked, FriendFed…?