See Spot Surf

theodp writes "Cubby from New Jersey has a passion for peanut butter. Dedeaux from Baton Rouge likes to suck his brother's ear. Spike from the East Bay just wants to kiss pretty girls. Two months after computer and canine geeks in San Francisco launched a social networking site for dogs, 8,000+ pooches have their own Web page on Dogster.com, complete with mug shots, personal stories and listings of likes and pet peeves."

Comments

Bakery

[nycsubway]

There is a bakery in my town that sells ONLY dog treats. They are in the shape of cookies, pastries, cakes, etc. But they're for dogs.

It is sad, but if money can be made doing it, I'm sure someone will.

OT

[*coughs loudly*]

What a wildly inappropriate slashdot article. Eight thousand pictures of dogs on the internet? Wow, that's really stretching what's possible with our infrastructure in a geek-friendly way.

The market has decided...

[Wee]

...and nobody cares. I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you this.

Dogster. Wonderful. I write an Open Source Social Network program, and Slashdot rejects any sort of story on it only to put a story about Dogster.

Perhaps that's because the owners of this site feel that nobody would care about your web site? Or are you just upset that you can't get free advertising? Not to put too fine a point on it, but you sound like a kid whining because nobody comes to your birthday party. You can't force them to come, you know. If people see some value in doign so, or satisfy some personal need in doing so, they will come.

Yeah, I know, the type of site I'm doing has been done... But then again, does that make Linux "Just Another Kernel?" I'm sure that would be up for debate.

You hit the nail on the head: "it's been done". And done more than a few times. And been done probably better than you did it -- better than I would have done it, too. That's just reality.

But what gets me is that you compare your web page to an operating system's kernel. Newflash: one is important in the grand scheme of things, and one is not. Again, that's just reality. I'm a little surprised that I even have to say that. I mean, your comparison isn't even close to valid. It's like you're complaining that nobody cares about the really nice and intricate paper airplanes you've made, and all anyone talks about is 747's. And now all everyone -- the ingrates! -- is talking about this new Airbus thing. Where's the justice? Seriously, can't you see where your anger is just a little misplaced?

Yes everyone, the ideal is novel

Again, you hit the nail squarely on the head: Dogster is a novel idea. My mom even knows about it. My relatives who hardly use computers think it's just fabulous, and put up profiles of little Fluffy the poodle. The idea has traction, for whatever reason (quite a bit of that reason is being the first to do it).

Yours is not a novel concept, and is probably somewhat played out by now. You're late to the party. Time to look at reality again. If you did "Catster" or "Birdster" or, hell, even "Hamster" people might come. But imagine if you did a Dogster clone. Can you see anyone coming to it? No? Why not? Probably for the same reason that nobody comes to your Friendster clone: it's an already crowded market, with no room for your efforts. That may be sad, but it's true.

But hello, anyone? This is news for NERDS, not, news for dogs. We typically like things like anime, Open Source, Star Wars and SCO. This fits under neither.

Try not to tell people what they like. That's likely partly the cause of your problems.

I'd suggest abandoning the Friendster clone you've done and spending time and effort on something else. You've probably learned a lot from your efforts, so it likely wasn't a completely lost cause. Use that knowledge to make a new site, if a web site is really what you want, only this time find a novel concept. Slashdot, even though it's been copied over and over, was novel when it started out. That's why it's popular (and regardless of what you think about its occupants or its design, Slashdot is popular).

-B