Humane Treatment of Animals in a Virtual World

According to a recent Media Post article, the Humane Society of the United States (one of my favorite organizations) is partnering with There.com to promote membership in HSUS with a new demographic. Users of the site will be able to learn more about HSUS and even purchase memberships for their avatars.

I find this one of the more innovative approaches I've seen an association take to member recuitment and retention (full disclosure, HSUS is one of my clients, although not on this project). It doesn't surprise me that HSUS would be a leader. They already have Facebook and MySpace pages, contirbute regularly to their vlog and podcast and their CEO, Wayne Pacelle, regularly posts interesting and insightful entries into his blog. I do have one small quibble. The blog isn't open, meaning that HSUS reviews comments and posts only samples. While I understand that they are probably a lightening rod for many groups and there are probably a huge range of negative comments, I'm thinking HSUS would be able to get more positive responses and viewers of its blog if they had an open comment policy.

At any rate, while for many of us a couple social networks a podcast and a blog might not sound so "cutting edge," considering the fact that many associations aren't even willing to set up a blog, HSUS seems to have it going on with the new technology.

Now if I could only teach my dog to listen to the podcasts. Then we'd be all set...