Calling All Bloggers: Blog Action Day 08

Blaise Zerega is cheering for this. The second annual Blog Action Day 08 will occur on October 15 it was announced today. Bloggers around the world are being asked to publish a post, podcast, or video about poverty in the hopes of increasing public awareness and perhaps triggering a global conversation about solutions to the pervasive problem. Bloggers can also participate by running promotional ads or donating that day's proceeds to microfinance organization, Kiva, or to charity via The Global Fund.

Last year, the theme was the Environment and more than 20,000 blogs took part as well as companies like Wells Fargo, Google, and bodies like the UN and the EU.

This event's success was due not just to the urgency of the cause but also to the grass-roots, bottoms-up, self-organizing principles of the Web. With the increased use of social networks, Twitter, and of course, all forms of blogging (video!) the number of participants this year will easily surpass last year.

Already, 926 blogs have registered with a combined audience of 2,357,625.  This includes 13 of the Top 100 blogs (as measured by Technorati): TechCrunch.com, Readwriteweb.com, Mashable.com, SmashingMagazine.com, Problogger.net, GigaOM.com, Copyblogger.com, ZenHabits.net, Inhabitat.com, VentureBeat.com, Mentalfloss.com, PronetAdvertising.com and TorrentFreak.com. 

Anyone can register at http://blogactionday.org.