Mohmmad Ali Abtahi, a former Iranian Vice President and blogger, says that everybody who knows about world politics and is a little bit honest, will acknowledge Hezbollah's and Sayed Hasan Nasrallah’s great victories in last two years. Abtahi adds:

Western media claims that Nasrallah is under the influence of Iranian officials, who are in the charge of country’s [Lebanon] foreign affairs. I guess these are empty words because if our diplomacy could act for Iran’s interests as did Hezbollah for its own interests, Iran could achieve great victories. With such victories that Sayed Hasan got, we just could wish he would Iran’s diplomacy’s adviser.

Furogh2007 says that Iran's national (state) media celebrated this exchange between Hezbollah and Israel. The blogger adds:

“There are several Iranian security agents have been taken as hostages in south Lebanon but the Iranian Government refuses negotiation. Why is the Iranian Government rejoicing about the exchange of prisoners in Lebanon but refuses such an act to save Iranian citizens.”

Tobi begs to differ[Fa] and says:

Iranian officials are wrong when they say this exchange was a humiliating defeat for Israel. Israel showed it considers their dead people with great value.

Green bloggers decided to launch a campaign, which runs July 5-10, to inform people and other bloggers about the beautiful wetland nature and their endangered status. They have also published several photos to show the beauty of the Anzali wetlands in contrast to its destruction.

Beauty and Peace

Anzali, in the north of Iran, is one of the most important wetlands and has attracted several bloggers' attention. We can discover its peaceful nature thanks to Kossof, a leading photo blogger.

He also shows its beauty:

Mohsen Tizhoosh, a green blogger and activist, says [Fa] that we should launch a green campaign on the Internet in each season and promote environmental issues among bloggers. He also published another photo to remind us about the wild life in this area:

Destruction

Jamshidi, a blogger and journalist, says it seems that the Japanese care more about the Iranian wetlands than the Iranian government. She writes [Fa] that:

5 years ago, Japanese researchers and specialists studied the Anzali wetland and warned about the consequences of constructing a road… The government wants to construct an alternative road about 500 meters longer than this one, which will damage severely the Anzali wetland.

She adds “Japan paid the costs of the Anzali wetland studies. But now some people do not want to follow the environmental organization's advice because it costs too much.”

She has published several photos showing the destruction and the presence of security forces making way for the road construction:

In less than two years Balatarin has become a valuable source of information and communication. In this interview Mehdi, who holds a PhD at Physics from MIT and is also currently co-founder and CEO of Adoptic.com, shares with us his Balatrin adventure.

Please tell us when you started Balatarin and how you evaluate its success. Any statistics?

I launched Balatarin on August 16, 2006. So far there have been 300,000 news summaries posted on the site. 5 million votes and 1 million comments have also been entered. I, however, evaluate Balatarin's success beyond its statistics: Balatarin is widely read by Iranian journalists and bloggers in and outside of Iran. As a result, the discussions taking place on Balatarin get coverage in multiple countries and platforms.

You used Digg as a model. Do you think an Iranian facebook will become popular too?

Yes. I think that having a Persian facebook that encompasses Iranian universities and high schools can be very attractive. Obviously, it depends on how well the site is designed.

How is the weight of bloggers in Balatarin?

Quite a bit. Most of the active users are bloggers. Balatarin is also the place for Persian bloggers to get wide coverage for what they write. Blog posts that are submitted to Balatarin often get more comments than the original posts on the blogs.

Balatarin was a leap forward for citizen media for Iranians. How you see the development of citizen media in the country?

Iran had a head start in citizen media by being one of the first countries where blogging became widely popular. However, it hasn't been able to follow up with the pace. Any type of citizen media, even if it's online, needs to be promoted by meet-ups and seminars as well as businesses which support its survival. This has not been the case in Iran.

Are you planning to launch an English version of Balatarin?

Not any time soon. At the moment, I am focusing on another project, Adoptic.com, which was inspired by my experience in Balatarin. The idea is to allow bloggers to promote their content by using their own and other fellow blog spaces. I am trying to create a very smooth way of content discovery and promotion. There are also a ton of cool algorithms being used in the process.

Any ideas to share with our audience?

I try to keep myself exposed to new ideas. It's very easy to be consumed with what we do everyday. Something what I do, is I buy a new and random magazine each time I fly. This exposes me to ideas from many different domains.