Moldova, Twitter and Nothing Under the Sun is New

First off, and most important: hooray for citizens of Moldova defending their democracy and freedom. In all sincerity - good luck with that, folks!

Lots of coverage right now about how Twitter was used to route around attempts at government censorship:

Nation & World | Twitter heard as media ignore Moldova unrest | Seattle Times Newspaper: "Television stations around the world on Tuesday aired images of the violent protest, with the Parliament building and Voronin's offices on fire.

But in Moldova, where press freedoms are weak, state television chose to broadcast a soap opera and another station showed images of dance routines.

So the pro-European protesters turned to Twitter and the Internet to keep in touch.

'We sent messages on Twitter, but didn't expect 15,000 people to join in. At the most we expected 1,000,'"

So, there's two things going on here; nothing new under the sun.

First, there's a new communications technology that's used where other established ones failed, in newsworthy circumstances. In this case, Moldovans used Twitter to spread news and organize protests, and that gets some things accomplished.

Second it gets noticed by people who are interested in the new communications technology, and they say "look what great stuff people are doing with this tech we are fans of! this reinforces our belief that the tech is great!"

But that's OK. Good stuff is good stuff.

If you like this stuff, this is a great piece to go further with these ideas:

Moldova's Twitter revolution is NOT a myth | Net Effect: "As someone who started the 'Moldova's Twitter revolution' meme, I think I owe the world another essay. No, no, I am not going to renounce the meme -- quite the opposite, I'd like to step up the debate."