credit, Barbara Dieu:Creative Commons
Internet users in Iran were surprised on Monday to find that they could access Facebook and Twitter without having to evade the government’s firewall, which had blocked direct access to the websites for years.
Hours later, the same sites Tuesday chewed over the sobering reality that the four-year-old firewalls were back in place.
The country’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, has promised several times to reduce internet censorship, and several of his cabinet ministers, including Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif have Facebook pages and Twitter account.
A few interesting Digital Stats about Iran: -
- Two‐thirds of Iranians prefer Yahoo as their email service provider
- NOD32 leads the anti-‐virus software market in Iran
- A study in 2012 revealed that nearly two-‐thirds (63%) of respondents stated that they use Yahoo as their primary email service provider. Gmail follows at 32%, leaving Hotmail with only a negligible 2% of the market. In terms of email usage per day, 69% of Iranians report spending two hours per day or less, 18% between 2-‐4 hours, and 13% heavy users are on for 5 hours or more.
- Researching information (67%) was the top activity performed by Iranian user followed by reading news websites (65%), online banking (64%), downloading music (49%), social networking (44%), and shopping online (43%). Interestingly Social Media comes 4th in this list as many social media sites like Facebook are blocked in Iran.
Click here to know more about Digital stats of Iran.
