Some of the Web’s leading firms are rolling out new features, to accommodate worldwide interest in the protests in Iran — and to not-so-subtly help out the pro-democracy movement inside the country.

Iran’s activists have been relying on blogs, Tweets, text messages, Facebook groups, and uploaded YouTube videos to share information with one another, and with the outside world. Late Thursday night, both Facebook and Google’s translation service added Persian language support, which should make it even easier for the Iranian opposition and its growing global network of supporters to connect.

“We feel that launching Persian is particularly important now, given ongoing events in Iran. Like YouTube and other services, Google Translate is one more tool that Persian speakers can use to communicate directly to the world, and vice versa — increasing everyone’s access to information,” Google principal scientist Franz Och noted in a Thursday night blog post.

Almost immediately, supporters of Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi used the new feature to begin translating his official site into English.

In the past few days, Google’s YouTube video-sharing site recently changed its policy on violent footage, to allow videos from Iran’s protests to stay posted to the site. Twitter rescheduled maintenance, to accommodate Iranian activists.

Facebook — which was blocked in Iran, during the run-up to last week’s disputed election — also unveiled a Persian service. “Since the Iranian election last week, people around the world have increasingly been sharing news and information on Facebook about the results and its aftermath. Much of the content created and shared has been in Persian—the native language of Iran—but people have had to navigate the site in English or other languages,” writes Facebook engineer Eric Kwan. “Today we’re making the entire site available in a beta version of Persian, so Persian speakers inside of Iran and around the world can begin using it in their native language.”

By Noah Shachtman

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