Balatarin

Balatarin (in Persian: بالاترین, meaning the highest) is a community website through which users can post links to the webpages of their interest, with an emphasis on Iranian audience. Although only registered users can post links to Balatarin, registration was firstly free, but after a while moderator banned all new membership applications!. New links initially go to the "recently posted" page and once they collect enough positive votes, they are moved to the front page, which increases their chance of being viewed. The underlying idea is a mixture of reddit, digg, newsvine, and del.icio.us.

Balatarin was named editors' pick in 1386 (March 2007 to March 2008) in 7 Sang, a Persian Internet magazine, and it was voted the second most popular Persian website in the same year. Balatarin was also voted the best "News Website" in 1385 by readers of the same magazine. Balatarin proved to be a very effective social network after the Iranian presidential elections in June 2009. Many Iranians used Balatarin for getting news about the green movement against claimed fraud in elections as the Government had started censoring all the news about the unprecedented protest movement of the Iranians.Balatarin was also used as a platform for coordinating the protest actions against the regime. The effectiveness of such actions were proved during the demonstration of Quds day on Sept.18th 2009. Tens of thousands of Iranians demonstrated against the Iranian government in Tehran and subverted the government sanctioned anti-Israeli demonstration.