Things are probably going pretty well for you if you plan to shutter your business for only an hour or two to implement a system upgrade, and the U.S. government, saying your service is too valuable, requests that you delay.

It happened to Twitter today, when the U.S. State Department called it to hint that a planned upgrade that would disrupt service in Iran might be a bad idea. Protesting Iranians have been using the San Francisco-based service to help dispute their recent election.

Even President Obama chimed in, saying in a Reuters story that Iranian "people's voices should be heard and not suppressed."

Twitter acceded, saying in a blog post that its upgrade was being delayed for the better good. The hour-long maintenance was pushed back to 2 p.m. PST (1:30 a.m. on Wednesday in Iran, when, one assumes, not much protesting is going on).