Hossein Derakhshan, an Iranian blogger, says there are 12,000 active Iranian bloggers. [Wow!] He says the current regime is powerful and definitely not reformist: they’ve shut down 90 newspapers in the past 5 years. About 3/4 of the bloggers are men. There are about 50,000 posts per day. 27% are on general topics, 16% are personal, and politics is only 7% f the topics. The number of sexual blogs is unlisted, but 6 of the top 10 are about sex. (Source: PersianBlog.com) For some reason, Persian bloggers don’t use blogrolls.

He says blogs serve many functions in Iran, including socializing and dating (many of the blogs express depression), connecting parents and children and exiles with their homelaned, introducing e-zines, producing serachable PErsian contnt, introducting new standards and technologies, providing pornography, inspiring writers (e.g., Rez Ghassemi’s daily novel) and generating direct relationships with readers.

Weblogs are a great window into Iranian society, Hossein says: people are both hopeful and eager to try their freedom, and are feeling depressed and represssed (especially sexually).

Fascinating.

[Hossein says on his blog that he doesn’t like the idea of live blogging because it’s rude. Nevertheless, here I am, likve-blogging his presentation. Sorry, Hossein!]

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