October 1, 2007 5:29 PM

If Tyra Can Do It. . .

We created our online voter registration widget with the goal of making it easy enough to use that anyone could put it on their website and help the people they know register to vote. That's the beauty of Web 2.0 -- we can build the tools and throw them out there, but then it's up to the broader community to really make them work.

As of today, we have 126 groups and individuals hosting the widget -- from Rock the Vote to personal MySpace pages -- and new folks keep signing up at a faster pace every day. As I checked our registration counts this afternoon, I noticed that a new site had surged to our number two spot for the day, with nearly 500 registrations in the last 24 hours.

Who was it? Which new savvy political group had posted the widget to their site?

It was, in fact, the Tyra Banks Show. Indeed, the registrations were coming from the website of the talk show hosted by none other than former supermodel and host of America's Next Top Model Tyra Banks. Her guest today was presidential contender Barack Obama, giving his first daytime talk show interview since declaring his candidacy.

In addition to grilling the Senator on the contents of his iPod, his first date with Michelle, and the nuances of his plans for redeploying US troops from Iraq, she did something else: Tyra asked her audience to go to her website and register to vote.

That's proof enough for me our widget is powering one fierce voter registration drive.

If Tyra can do it, why don't you?