Happy Blog Day 2007 · Global Voices
David Sasaki

It's the third annual international day of hyperlinked love – Blog Day 2007. The Global blogosphere has grown tremendously since Israeli blogger Nir Ofir first came up with the idea of every blogger introducing five new bloggers to his or her readership.
Although the internet erases the physical distance between us, real life barriers such as differences in language and culture still persist and we often end up grouping ourselves online just as we do offline. Blog Day gives us a chance one day each year to reflect on who we tend to interact with online. Do they come from our same country? Speak our same language? Belong to our same social class? And it also provides the opportunity to invite new members to our online circles of friends. Blog Day is when we stop being shy and start saying hi.
With the help of Global Voices authors, editors, and translators, here is a small sampling of how bloggers across the world chose to commemorate the event.
Chefuri, a blog which normally focuses solely on cooking, decided to link to five blogs that have nothing to do with the kitchen:
Este es un post especial para celebrar el día de los blogs. Este iniciativa tiene como objetivo dar a conocer otros blogs que no tienen nada que ver en temática o idioma al blog que los recomienda. No hay ninguna norma que diga que un aficionado de la cocina no puede ser aficionado también a la informática o al baloncesto. Pues el espíritu de este post es mostrar 5 blogs recomendados por Chefuri y Chefwww que no tienen nada que ver con las gastronomía.
They go on to explain why they recommended Pizirisas, a video blog about basketball; Noticias Tech, which focuses on tech gadgets; El Rincon de Laura, a podcast about the “adventures and misadventures of a girl of the 21st century”; and DSWii, all about video games.
While most bloggers, like Chefuri, commemorated the day online, others got together offline. In Phnom Penh a group of motivated young people organized the first-ever Cambodian Bloggers’ Summit. You can read more about the summit on posts by Chantra, Details are Sketchy, and Sopheap. Preetam Rai and Steve Goodman both have lots of pictures from conference.
In Peru a large group of bloggers also met up offline. Johan Tennassi shares the agenda [ES] for BlogDayPeru [ES]. It includes the collection of donated goods for victims of the recent Peruvian earthquake and, later, a meetup in Lima's Mochileros Bar.
No massive reunion was planned in Colombia, however blogs are already linking to others. Comúnica wondered:
El portal encargado de promocionar la iniciativa lanza esta nueva versión que dice ser la tercera. ¿Qué tipo de acogida ha tenido? Es algo que valdría la pena saber.
Then, a day later, the blog was selected as one of the 5 recommended blogs from the Blogotemático podcast, a podcast about the Colombian blogging scene. Jorge Andrés Echeverry Mejía, Comúnica´s administrator has gone beyond the five recommendations in a post: he has written a separate article for each of the 5 selected blogs.
Colombia´s bloggers are currently posting their personal recommendations. Some of them are: vagabundos VIP, Piso Tr3s, Ojo al Texto, Fábrica de Cosas, user experience, medeamaterial and huellasPyP.
From Panama, everyone's favorite food blogger, Melissa de Leon, posted a bilingual video celebrating the day.
Writing from Johannerburg, South Africa, Glad to be a Girl recommends five blogs for Blog Day, which includes AfriGadget: Gadgets for Africa: Solving everday problems with African ingenuity.
This site is hysterical, especially after my recent travels and those brilliant wooden Congo bicycles!
And Credo Mutwa: Zulu Shaman, traditional healer, Zulu Sangoma & High Sanusi
Hmmmm, I added this one because Witch Doctors fascinate me … I'm not sure how much of it I'd read, but it certainly piques my curiosity!
Mrs M begins her Blog Day post:
So apparently, I’m supposed to recommend blogs I read to everybody…let’s see: I completely dig reading Postsecret. It’s just nice to know there are other people in the world with inadequacies too. I’ve recently discovered The Divine Miss M (no, not an unmarried version of myself) who’s from London, works in television and has a crazy director person to answer too. Indeed hilarious a read this one. My (amazing) friend Tobes Hanks is witty and engaging about news, life, journalism and irritating shit like the uselessness of having people around in general…
Ndagha decided to congratulate all bloggers, particularly Malawians:
Congrats to all bloggers in particular those coming from Malawi. Let us take this opportunity to blog and make our contributions be part of the global voice. Sorry that I have been too busy to write more than this on this important and historic day. Otherwise you can see that I enjoy blogging!
Vicki begins by explaining how Blog Day is celebrated:
Blog Day is traditionally marked by linking to five blogs which step outside one's comfort zone – the kind of blogs one would not normally blogroll – and advising the bloggers of your linking of them.
Chinese language bloggers seem less inspired than they were this time last year. A few posts came in from Taiwan, nearly nothing from Hong Kong, but a good couple dozen from China; perhaps a more creative shtick will bring better results in 2008.
Mainland IT bloggers were all over 3108 Day, casting their votes for the best 2.0 services that China's 130 million bloggers have to offer; Paopao at A Colourful Bubble? hits all corners with her choice five, sending readers to sites like Digg blogalike “fried egg” Jandan and Show Web 2.0. Over to Jandan's Blog Day votes we find cartoon blog TuDang, a trend PiscDong went with with his pick of doodle blogger DemiDov, ditto for NoKV who recommends blog artist Cherry Xue. WordPress user Yamalu remembers to give a tip of the hat to world-class sheer force of search, speed and thought bloggers like He “Veg Head” Caitou in his post, ‘Merry Blog Day’.
Naomed of Blog politique au Senegal uses Blog Day to depart from his usual themes–corruption, women's rights or political intrigues–showcasing blogs about his personal interests, like astronomy or Japanese floral arrangement.
For JIMaroc.com, blogging is a path to life improvement:
Dans ce jour du blog, nous tenons à remercier les lecteurs qui respectent nos initiatives, ceux qui nous encouragent, ceux qui commentent avec sincérité nos articles, ceux qui nous critiquent en nous montrant avec des évaluations lucides le bon chemin, ceux qui font preuve d'amour et d'intérêt…car, en restant attentif aux évolutions d'un blogger, en lui faisant des remarques réflechies, on fait du bien autour de nous.
And Moroccan blogger citoyenhmida reminds his readers that:
Dans la blogama, nous trouvons d'excellents espaces, parfois extrêmement animés, parfois très personnels, souvent engagés, des blogs…
From Serbia
In a public announcement about Blog Day, a political party, Strengths of Serbia Movement pointed out, that for them, the only way to have a say in that country is by using means provided by the Internet, because many traditional media boycott their activities. Blogs are important asset to every democracy as they picture freedom of expression. This organization whose president, Bogoljub Karic is politically exiled from the country says, the authorities should engage in promoting blogging culture and making infrastructure available, as only 23.9 percent of population goes online in Serbia.
From all of us at Global Voices, we wish you a happy Blog Day and we hope that our site serves as a bridge to meet new bloggers from around the world. If we missed your Blog Day post, please tell us about it in the comments section.