Geodog

When it gets to dogs, this social networking thing has gone to far

Today I received an long 'zine email from David Weinberger, who reminded me that he had set up a neighborhood on the fashionable new geographically-based academia-powered social networking site, i-Neighbors, so I went and checked out North Berkeley, the neighborhood that I, slave to blog-fashion and still hoping that somewhere, somehow, someday, I will find out what these social networking sites are good for, had created after reading David's initial post. To my great surprise I was no longer the only member of the i-hood, quite a few other people had moved in. As I was checking out their pages, I saw that one of them had a link with his pet's name. I clicked and was taken to ... Dogster. Apparently this is old news to many, but it was the first I had heard of it, and its companion site, Catster.

On one hand this makes sense. There may even be a business model buried in there somewhere -- a lot of pet owners are fanatical about their pets, as anyone who has recently followed San Francisco politics and the battles between the dog owners vs. the Natural Areas Program can attest. And they spend a lot of money -- Americans spent 32.4 billion dollars on their pets last year, and upscale pet businesses are doing well. Or there may not be a business here -- remember the sock puppet?

Whatever the business rationale, this is nuts. Social networking for pets? Give me a break. It is a symptom, not a cause, but what does it say about what our priorities are in this country?

Nothing that sits well in my stomach.