I stumbled upon Dogster on an idle afternoon while trying Google’s search results for some weird queries. Just when you thought you’d seen it all, you land up at a social networking site for dogs! Or, to be technically correct, for Dog Lovers! The very idea seems incredulous and you might wonder who’d be goofy enough to pose as his own dog and write blogs form his dog’s perspective.
That is, until you realize that it is actually a neat business idea to target and serve a distinct segment of the consumer population. By catering to a niche segment, this provides the $36 bn pet industry advertisers with highly relevant eyeballs. And the results speak for themselves.
Dogster and Catster are community sites for owners to share pictures and diaries of their pets. The founders of Dogster Inc apparently started up the sites as a parody of Friendster, and the like. Dogster's advertising rate at around $5 cpm is almost 40 times that of MySpace, a much more general SN. Dogster makes 95 % of its revenue from advertising and sponsorships and the rest from premium subscriptions. Advertisers include names as big as Disney, Target, PetSmart, Gap and Warner Brothers.
What makes a seemingly crazy idea like Dogster click? Dogster creates a new user experience since it orients itself around dogs rather than actual people. Users can stay anonumous and yet identify with something as dear as their pet. Since users share a common interest, canine related nomenclature and puns are plenty. People love to talk about stuff they are really passionate about.
The site is doing great with more than 300000 registered users. CEO Ted Rheingold followed up Dogster’s success with launching Catster and now wants to extend this to cover every pet and ultimately every hobby.
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