Best Friends could receive a $10,000 donation from Jinni.com, a search and recommendation engine for movies and television programs that made its public debut on October 5.

For every person who signs up for the service, Jinni will donate 10 cents to Best Friends, or as much as $10,000 — should 100,000 people sign up. The promotion lasts one month. (Click on image)

Jinni’s search engine has already won several accolades and awards for its cutting-edge semantics technology, which zeroes in on specific movie and television recommendations based on your taste, your mood and your preference of genres, places, time periods, actors and plots. During Jinni’s test phase, CNET named Jinni’s movie recommendation engine the very best on the web — better than those of Netflix and Rotten Tomatoes. The Web Marketing Association agreed, presenting Jinni with the 2009 Web award for “Outstanding Achievement in Web Development.”

After helping you make your choice of a movie or television show to watch, Jinni shows where you can rent, buy, or watch the movie online.

Phoebe Spanier, marketing manager of Jinni, says that the company was looking for a “more meaningful way” to spend its advertising budget. Doing some good for the animals, while promoting its product, fit the bill. It also jibed with the company’s ethics.

“We ourselves are a company of animal lovers,” she says. Spanier, for instance has two cats, both of whom she adopted from a shelter.

Animal welfare was also a cause that Jinni believed would find wide appeal.

“It’s a universal cause,” Spanier says. “Everybody can relate to finding good homes for homeless pets.”

Signing up for Jinni takes only a few moments. Go to www.jinni.com.

Be sure to pass the word around and help us reach our $10,000 goal.

As part of Best Friends’ 25th anniversary in 2009, our goal is to double our membership, so we can double our efforts to bring about a time when all companion animals have a forever home. What can you do to help? Give the Gift of a Best Friends membership to family and friends.

Photo by Clay Myers and courtesy of  Phoebe Spanier .