I never got sucked into the MySpace phenomenon, though my girlfriend uses it religiously. When we got our Maltese, Puff, a few weeks ago, I recommended she sign up for Dogster, which is a social networking site for dogs. She signed up for Dogster on Friday. The simple sign-up process involved a question/answer format and picture upload. She had finished creating our dog’s Dogster page in just a few minutes.  

We immediately wanted to show him to the Dogster community, so we clicked on the groups tab where she found the Maltese Mommies group. She joined and invited another Maltese to be friends with our dog. I checked the site later to find that Puff had his first friend, Charlie. That’s when my addiction began– I was overwhelmed with the unexpected obsession of making my dog the most popular pup on all of Dogster!

After we had one “pup pal”, I quickly jumped on the opportunity to garner many more. I received an invitation to join another group called OnLy PuPs, which I accepted without delay. It is my unfounded belief that the more groups I join, the more pup pals Puff can get. I started shooting off invites like a madman. To my chagrin, I’ve sent out fifteen invites, but Puff only has four friends.

I really like the fact that I can tell how many people have viewed Puff’s page. I dislike that I can’t tell who has given him a bone. In fact, Puff has eight bones, but I’ve given him six of them.

Users are given ten Zealies, the Dogster currency, after joining. Users can buy more of them, or will be given twenty-five a month by signing up for Dogster Plus ($19.95/year). You can use zealies to buy stars or rosettes to give to other dogs…or your own. A rosette is basically a ribbon you would get in a first grade spelling bee. I can see how some people enjoy these, but to be frank, I could care less about them. That is, unless you all want to login to Dogster and give Puff a lot of them!

I’ve given Puff a good start, but he and I have talked, and he will take over further responsibilities for finding new friends on Dogster. Though, it’s such a great site, I will probably still help him.

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Categories - Social Networking, Dogster |