:: netwoman's blog ::

On the internet, everyone knows you're a Dog (or cat!)

On the internet, everyone knows you're a Dog (or cat!)

New York Times article that talks about social networking sites for cats & dogs. I have Catbook (thru Facebook), but not for my dogs (although I created websites for them years ago).

While the article is a bit tongue-in-cheek, I think it points out the importance of homophily in our social networks; we create and maintain communities (both online & offline) around points of shared interests & activities - however quirky it might be.

Hey Spot, You’ve Got Mail
By MICHELLE SLATALLA

That is how I ended up at an online social network called Dogster, where my plan was to ask for help after I joined the site.

Or, I should say, after Otto and Sticky joined.

Think of Dogster as Facebook for canines. There, my dogs (along with 346,639 other four-legged members, as of last week) had their own profile pages that listed their likes and dislikes, personal mottoes — Otto's is "Are you going to finish that?" — and best tricks ("catching seedless grapes in mid-air").

So what if my dogs could barely type, much less upload photos of themselves wearing Santa hats?

We live in an era where there is a social network to cater to any niche group you can think of, including infants whose parents create Facebook profiles for them and then expect the godparents to pretend to correspond with the babies. Why shouldn't pets arrange play dates online or blog about their health issues?

Or as Ted Rheingold, the founder of Dogster, put it in a phone interview last week, "It's not weird at all."

Mr. Rheingold has a dog, of course. But more important, he has seen the simple photo-sharing site he started in 2004 grow into a popular meeting place where pet owners communicate online and, in some cases, in the real world. One group of 100 West Highland terrier owners who met on Dogster convened at a (dog friendly) motel on the Carolina coast.

It was perhaps inevitable that Dogster spawned Catster, which had 145,551 members of its own as of last week. Coming next: horses, birds and fish will get their own sites, too, Mr. Rheingold said.

posted by Netwoman @ 12:48 PM