Dogster Raises $1 Million

Posted on September 14, 2006

VentureBeat reports that Dogster has raised $1 million in financing. VentureBeat also blogs about how dog owners are writing diaries from the dogs point of view.

But more interestingly, owners are pretending they are the dogs, and writing little diaries, and the diaries are often becoming more about themselves, as seen through their dogs eyes. Take, for example, the "dog of the week," a dalmatian/labrador retriever (pictured here) named "TK." You can see all kinds of things on his profile, including character traits, hobbies, and you can also check out his diary. And this is where it gets interesting. As is typical elsewhere on the site, TK's diary quickly becomes more about "Mommy" or "Daddy," less about TK. Under pretense of their dogs doing the talking, owners are expressing themselves in all kinds of ways that they wouldn't normally.

Thanks to VentureBeat we now know it was not the dogs who were writing all those diaries. Parents often do the same with baby blogs and write them from the child's point of view. VentureBeat says the popular Dogster site received 17 million pageviews last month. Dogster has a direct competitor at Pawspot and there are also several other pet social networks.