One of the biggest stories of the week has been Iranians’ use of social media to communicate with each other and the outside world during the Iran election crisis. Protesters used Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Wikipedia and blogs to disseminate information and help people take action.

The Iran crisis has literally given journalistic power to the people, as individuals spread news of developing events in the country. Twitter users adopted the hashtag #CNNfail to proclaim that “new media” (individuals using Twitter) had provided better coverage than “old media” (CNN) throughout the early stages of the crisis.

We decided to use Social Radar to analyze and compare the reach of messages posted by individuals with low influence vs. high influence. Social Radar tracks influence based on the number of links to a specific blog or account. For example, most average Twitter users or bloggers would be considered low influence, while sites like Engadget or CNN would be considered high influence and major media news sources.

The chart below provides interesting results. We measured the number of posts over the last few weeks for low influencers vs. high influencers on the topic of Iran or Iran election. Iran election conversation among low influencers is spreading twice as quickly as conversation among high influencers. The Iran crisis has proven that individuals can report relevant news quickly. What does it mean for “old media” in the future? Will we continue to see more and more examples of individuals using social media to beat established journalists to news stories?