A year ago, Global Voices in Spanish began dedicating the first day of the week to listening to readers’ recommendations about blogs. This idea came out of a exhaustive discussion about whether blogs are endangered or not and what the real reach of what we call citizen media. The Twitter hashtag #LunesDeBlogsGV (Monday of Blogs on GV) was born, and since then has curated blogs that you, the users, don't want to see lost in the abundance of information offered in cyberspace.

While some Mondays had more participation than others, the truth is that this initiative was maintained throughout the year thanks to everyone's collaboration. From our experience, we can confirm and conclude:

1. Blogs still are a strategy for communication and community visibility.
2. On the Internet, there is no final word on the best way to say things. The possibilities are endless.
3. The most shared topics were: Internet use, the protection of the environment, gender, regional tourism, and politics, among others.
4. One hundred and forty characters sometimes fall short to share information, which is the reason why blogs exist and will continue existing.
5. Blogs let us share our thoughts on campaigns for social change that we follow. That's how we learn and share regionally.

The Spanish-speaking blogging community has shown us a great deal of support. For instance, Ivan Lasso, a blogger behind several projects on the web, says:

me parece una iniciativa que ayuda a visibilizar contenido interesante, algo que siempre es bueno con todo el contenido que nos inunda a diario. Además, he visto que un par de enlaces de los que recomendé los habéis convertido en posts, por lo que imagino que es una práctica habitual. Así que añadiría que al tomar algunas recomendaciones y elaborar posts a partir de ellas, ayudáis a resaltar aún más el contenido, realizando así una labor de curaduría bastante completa al ir más allá de la fugacidad de Twitter.

To me, it's an initiative that helps give visibility to interesting content, something that is always good given all the content that we are overwhelmed with every day. In addition, I saw a couple links I suggested turned into posts, which I suppose is common practice. So I would add that by taking some recommendations and developing posts from them, you all help highlight content even more, curating more completley by going beyond Twitter's transience.

Our friends from SocialTic, an organization that promotes good technology uses, also devoted us a few words (thank you Indira!):

#LunesDeBlogsGV es una iniciativa que ha logrado tejer redes entre blogueros a través de la publicación y recomendación de blogs cada semana en Twitter. De corrupción hasta hábitos de lectura, los contenidos que se comparten a través de este espacio semanal muestran lo diversa que es la comunidad de Global Voices. Iniciativas como esta son de gran importancia hoy en día para seguir nutriendo a internet de contenidos diferentes y generando redes entre usuarios, manteniendo a Internet como un espacio de intercambio abierto. Para SocialTIC hemos encontrado muy buenas recomendaciones de blogs en el hashtag y nos alegra ver que la comunidad participante cada vez es más grande.

The #LunesDeBlogsGV initiative has managed to weave connections between bloggers through the publication and recommendation of blogs every week on Twitter. From corruption to reading habits, the content shared by this weekly space demonstrates how diverse Global Voices’ community is. Projects like this are of great importance nowadays to keep encouraging diverse content on the Internet and generating different connections between users, preserving the Internet as an open exchange space. For SocialTIC we have found great recommendations for blogs through the hashtag, making us feel gratified to see how the contributing community keeps increasing.

Mujeres Construyendo (Woman Building), a group of women bloggers who use information and communications technology to encourage women to speak up, lead and participate, was one of the more regular contributors this year. Claudia Calvin, the founder of the project, shares:

Desde hace un año, los lunes han cambiado de significado. En Mujeres Construyendo es el día de darle vuelo a la difusión del talento de las blogueras de nuestra comunidad y de poner una lupa global para que el mundo conozca lo que las mujeres valientes y talentosas dicen, escriben, piensan y proponen. ¿Por qué? Porque es el día que #lunesdeblogs, iniciativa impulsada con visión y asertividad por Global Voices, tiene lugar y es cuando conocemos también a las y los blogueros de otras latitudes que comparten sus bitácoras.

Gracias Global Voices no sólo por pensar en la importancia de magnificar las voces de la blogósfera en español, el tercer idioma más importante en la red, sino por invitarnos a formar parte de esta iniciativa. Compartimos un interés común y una visión: los blogs y su importancia como herramienta de empoderamiento para las voces diversas. El mundo actual no se puede explicar sin ellos y son, sin duda, un factor relevante de cambio, de información y de denuncia.

Un abrazo al equipo de Global Voices y ¡sigamos construyendo historia!

The meaning of Mondays changed since one year ago. On Mujeres Construyendo, it's when the talents of our blogger community take flight and when we have a global audience to let hte world know what brave and talented women have to say, write, think and propose. Why? Because it's when #lunesdeblogs, an initiative driven with vision and assertiveness by Global Voices, takes place and that is when we also know about bloggers from other parts of the planet sharing their own blogs.

Thank you Global Voices, not only for thinking about the importance of magnifying bloggers in the Spanish language, the third most important language on the web, but for inviting us to be part of this initiative. We have a common interest and vision: blogs and their importance as tool of empowerment for diverse voices. The current world cannot be explained without them, and without a doubt they are an important factor of change, information and reporting

A hug for the Global Voices team, and let's keep building history!

Thank you all for joining us in this first year of #LunesDeBlogsGV. There's much more to come!

You can find some of the Spanish-language posts here and their English-translations here.