I think you're definitely right about this -- there's not nearly as much conversation as we'd like (though to be fair, the Facebook groups interface is not that conducive to regular conversation, and MySpace messaging goes on behind the scenes). It might be worthwhile to check out the Facebook group for STAND, our student division, which is considerably more active than our own. We've also had a number of discussions, mostly out of necessity, in response to comments on our YouTube channel.

In this case I think it's mostly a practical result of our very small staff -- I'm the only technical person in the organization, and usually the only person engaging users in these SNSes. We hope to grow in the future--

http://www.genocideintervention. net/network/jobs/itassoc

--and until then we probably won't be able to do as much as we want. (If you perceive us as "large," I'm thrilled at our apparent effect, but I assure you we don't hold a candle to any of the big human rights groups.)

In the meantime, I think it's important to focus on the philosophical strategy of engaging with our members and giving them the tools to take action. No doubt more user-generated campaigns (YouTube contests, a big push for discussing a particular topic on an SNS, a Flickr campaign, etc.) would increase the level of conversation, but unfortunately we just can't staff that yet.

If you have any ideas or other feedback on more effective member engagement, I'd love to hear them.

Another organization that I think is using conversations to great effect is WITNESS. I'm really excited about their new initiative, The Hub:

http://hub.witness.org/

I've been telling lots of people about this site (there's a blog post coming) because of its potential to connect conversations to concrete action -- not to mention the usefulness of user-submitted footage of human rights abuses. Our organization is structured somewhat differently -- we don't generally have a lot of people on the ground to submit such videos, as WITNESS does -- but we'll definitely be looking to them for inspiration.

--ivan