Check your Thursday New York Times Fashion & Style section for Michelle Slatalla’s great article on her experience joining Dogster.

Michelle joined the site in mid-November after her existing networks could not help her resolve a long-standing problem with her dogs. She made Dogster profiles for Otto and Sticky and posted her problem in our forums.

Members responded immediately (they always do), and after a little back and forth she got the solution that had eluded her family for so long.

I think the below quote sums up why we’ve been so successful. Though any engineer or entrepreneur can launch web community features, building and growing web communities that both draw in and retain active users year after year is the real trick, and it’s the nut we’ve cracked.

“All these people come for the same reason everyone else is on the Internet: they found people who are like-minded,” Mr. Rheingold said. “They were missing what I call a certain kind of sociality in their lives, and this is the place where they found it.”

You can read the NYT article online, or read their previous coverage of our business.