Dogster (and sister site Catster), which turned two last January, now has competition in the pet social network space from a newcomer - Massachusetts based PawSpot. The new company was founded by Mark Roberge.
The PawSpot site is still in beta and there aren’t many users yet (Dogster has 260,000 pets and gains about 700 new pets per day). However, it’s also taking a much different approach to serving pet owners than Dogster/Catster.
First, on PawSpot a human profile is included along with a pet profile, and users are encouraged to become “friends”. Dogster does not allow any personal information about a person to be included on their site - its for pets only. However, Dogster also encourages pets to become friends, linking them on the site.
Second, while Dogster focuses on being a showcase for featured pets, a place to show them off, PawSpot seems to be aiming to provide much needed services to pet owners. In particular, arranging for friends to take care of each other’s pets while away on vacation, and finding local dog parks.
For now I’m staying with Dogster. It’s too much trouble to move the page I have up for my dog Laguna over to a new site. Also, Dogster is a refreshing break from other social networks, which always seem to degenerate (by plan or otherwise) into dating sites (well, except for LinkedIn, I guess). The lack of any personal information ensures that.
You should get Laguna to write a review. She might prefer PawSpot. If she’s willing to move her profile over you should let her.
Thanks Andy, I’ll ask her.
I recently registered my english bulldog on http://www.pawspot.com - I liked it better because the pages and site seem less jumbled and crowded - easier to navigate…also plan on exchanging pet care…
site should be in Alpha. half the site has javascript errors causing main functions to break.
It looks useful.. you might also want to check out http://www.pikapet.com which i have found to be a lot of fun… and it’s not a dating site!.. hehe…
Back in March I applied for a PM there. I told them the ASP site they had would never scale. They got fussy and didn’t hire me. Looks like they’ve switched to JSP, but the site still can’t handle the load…
I tried using the site. I was finally able to login after a few hours and several tries. I entered all the info on my pet, but the “submit” button doesn’t seem functional. I think this site is alpha code, and dogster has nothing to worry about.
Max
Laguna is cool…
Thanks for all the feedback guys. I have been pretty impressed on how well people have been grasping the overall concept of the site. We were a bit caught of guard with the TechCrunch mention yesterday so I apologize to the folks that experienced issues. We have been a bit informal about our release schedule, as we had not promoted the site at all. This story hit the wires yesterday when we were right in the middle of a deployment. It turned out we had a caching issue so if you hit the site yesterday afternoon, you may want to refresh your browser cache and try again. Now that it is out there, we’ll be sure to abide by more formal deployment practices.
Anyway, keep the feedback coming. We have a lot of respect for the opinions of the TechCrunch readership and would love to integrate any insight you have. We are always listening at support@pawspot.com.
Thanks again,
Mark
Just some additional feedback. There is a lot of JavaScript loading up here. Prototype and scriptaculous alone sits at around 100k. In addition to the two, you are loading dojo presumable for the Ajax part. It seams that all the JavaScripts are being loaded on every regardless of if they are used or not. i.e. fckeditor.js. I think an important part of development will be optimisation. Load only what is necessary. Refrain from JavaScript enabled clicks (where the link href is a ‘#’ and requires the JavaScript to do the action). From a functionality point of view the site runs well, once the initial load that is. I’m running from South Africa on a 512k DSL line and the initial load is around 24 seconds for a full load. Tested in Opera, firefox and IE with only 2-3 seconds differences.
I think it belongs in beta and has some very nice features and look forward to using it in future.
Another Dogster competitor is at DoggyBio.com. Doggy Bio currently focuses on the bios of dogs, rather than social networking aspects. Nevertheless, it appears to be very promising.
Hi David,
Thanks for the feedback. We were caught right in the middle of performance optimization effort as well. Our plan is to follow the best practices in optimizing the javascript downloaded from the site and we appreciate your suggestion. Here is a great article on performance optimization of Ajax sites. You might have already seen it but if not check it out:
http://www.thinkvitamin.com/fe.....cript-fast
Additionally, because the site is pretty heavy on the images (over half the size of the home page) we are looking into using a CDN to reduce the latency for our customers who are overseas… this will happen when time and budget allows… of course that could be never
Any suggestions for best practices in optimizing Ajax enabled sites are welcome.
Thanks again for the feedback and please come back soon to see our progress with the optimization.
Thanks,
Matt
Ummmm…I’m thinking that I wouldn’t give the keys to my house to anyone that I met on the internet…or trust my dogs to them…..unless I was able to develop a REALLY, really good, LONG term FACE to face relationship with them…….You even take a risk with licenced and bonded services and old friends! But not someone I hardly know except over the net! Hasn’t anybody learned yet that people are hard to really know even when you are physically with them……much less when your relationship is computerized? Heck..and I’m a psychologist! Doesn’t anyone read the statistics on computer dating? And you can date without ever inviting them into your home, much less giving them unrestricted access and trusting them to care for your “baby”. Dogster is fun, and I like the page set up better. The forums can be good info sources…I ignore the silliness mostly. But petsitting from someone with a free online profile?…umm..pass.
While I totally agree with Susan comments there are some very cool features about pawspot that I like. The one feature that I found really helpful was the “find parks” feature which allows you to find parks near you that have pet fountains, leash laws, fences, etc.
I did a little review on pawspot on my blog as well after seeing it first here on TechCrunch.
http://webpodge.com/2006/09/23.....iends-too/
Sticking to Dogster! It’s friendly (overall), fun and has lots of different activities such as contests, photo strolls, groups, news, blog, etc.
Tried other places, always return to Dogster. Dogster is for Dogs, not humans, which we like. Adding human profiles would then make it like a dating site of sorts. Not interested. “For the Love of Dog”!
I have to say that my latest addiction is to spend time having fun with my pet at http://www.Pikapet.com, a newcomer that just keeps growing! In addition to the features Pikapet.com –a must check-out fun pet site- already has, they recently started on having Forums for all their pet-lover users to share information and thoughts about different topics that concerns us all pet owners. I came across this site a while ago and have seen its development ever since and believe it to be a top quality, clean-cut, fun community to our furry ones.
Starting out with the pet contests in different categories that allow you to win cool pet-related prizes from their sponsors, then they started nurturing the site adding cool videos and great article links. A couple of months ago a dog trainer and a cat veterinarian joined the team providing users with insightful answers to help out members about behavioral, health and other kind of issues in the care of their beloved pets.
So I invite you guys to check this great site at http://www.pikapet.com and start participating in this growing community. (By the way, they just got new set of amazing prizes for you and your pet)