If you’ve been following everything that is going on in Iran right now, it’s impossible to avoid noticing that Twitter has played a role in providing up-to-date information on the ground from Iranians participating in the protest.  Since most people still aren’t on Twitter, I thought I’d share a step-by-step on how to follow what’s going on here.  Just use Twitter Search.

Here’s how it works:

1. Go to http://search.twitter.com
2. Search for a topic.  In this case, search for #iranelection.  This will give you all recent “tweets” (140 character updates) that include the “#iranelection” hashtag (an identifier with a “#” in front so people can find tweets on a given topic.
3. If any of the people posting seem particularly interesting to you, click on their photo to see all of their tweets (updates).  (Also, you might notice in this search that many of the photos are green.  This is because last week a request went out from some active Iranian tweeters for everyone on Twitter to change their photo to green in solidarity with the protesters.)

Of course you don’t just have to use Twitter Search for following what’s going on in Iran.  Search for “#haiku” or “listening to” or “happy hour” near:SF and see what you get.

p.s. In case you were wondering, all the URL’s people post on Twitter look funny because they get shortened so that the URL doesn’t take up too much space…there’s a 140 character limit for each tweet.