Is Iran blocking FriendFeed?

As shockwaves from the current disturbances in Iran continue to be felt across the world, Twitter has been a useful tool for getting stories out of the troubled state.

The Iranian government has locked down social networking tools such as Facebook temporarily in the past so it wouldn’t be surprising to see such a block happen to Twitter now.

While it doesn’t seem that access to Twitter is currently beingrestricted by the Iranian authorities, there is evidence that another online service popular with Iranians, FriendFeed, is being blocked.

Bret Taylor, co-founder of FriendFeed, has posted a graph showing an almost 100% drop in traffic from Iran
over the past two days. It really is a shocking sight.

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While many Iranians may be using proxy servers to access the service (whether for privacy or practical reasons), such a sudden drop indicates some sort of ban has been implemented.

Iran is reportedly the 6th most active country in terms of FriendFeed use and support for the country’s widely used Farshi script was recently added to the service.

Meanwhile, a campaign has emerged on Twitter urging the service’s management to not perform maintenance today in order to keep a vital channel of communication open.