We soft launched Dogster & Catster Groups just after the New Year. We were expecting a few groups to be made while we work out the kinks and get it perfected before really putting it out there for the mass community. Little did we know! A month and a half later we have 721 public and private groups. This amount of usage blew away our expectations and seems somewhat significant since AOL, for instance, has only 239 groups in their “Dog” category and 48 groups in their “Cat” category. As of this morning there we have 9,907 unique members in at least one group and 14,872 unique pets joining in the fun.

Dogster & Catster Groups allow members to gather around a shared interest. Some of the features include messaging, event scheduling, photo sharing and link sharing with a lot more on the way. We have some really great groups so far. The largest is a breed specific group “Maltese Mommys” with over 577 members. Even a paid advertisers’ group can be super fun as well as attract a large membership. “The Disney Group” promoting the 50th Anniversary Edition of “Lady & The Tramp” has 387 members. Another trend we are happy about is the numerous groups created around a locality like “Seattle Dogs”.

From a business side, there are lots of opportunities for advertisers and sponsors. Advertisers can create their own group to message users of their products and services directly like Disney has done. There are also opportunities for advertisers to target specific groups where their message is more potent and the community more interested. Also noteworthy, is that page views and Adsense numbers are moving quite nicely in an upwards direction for groups.

Most of all, it is really exciting to see how our members took to the groups so fast and are really making important, substantial connections in this way. This after all is what Dogster and Catster are all about: sharing the love of your pets, sharing information and experiences and making real, substantial and safe connections.