Since day 1 we’ve received some of the most appreciative emails I’ve ever read. I thought I’d share one that just came in.

I really, Really, REALLY hope there are no professionals out there who provide counseling services to those who are addicted to Dogster, because I DON’T WANT TO BE CURED!

Thanks, Dogster! I LOVE YOU!!

Lisa T. :-)

Lisa, we love you right back!

We’ve been reading “Synthetic Worlds”, by the economist and MMORPG-enthusiast Edward Castronova, and it’s really a must read for anyone overseeing an online community. Synthetic Worlds wastes no time trying to explain why games exist, why they or popular or what Virtual Reality really means. Instead Castronova analyses what exactly is going on around these ‘virtual’ worlds, why a ‘virtual’ item or currency has very real values and why ‘virtual’ relations can be just as real as anything face to face. The reason I quoted virtual in the above sentence is that though we are talking about non-physical goods and entities, the millions of humans who interact with them take them so seriously they could just as easily be described as real.

What we’ve taken away from the book are the definitions and concepts that we see happening in our own virtual communities Dogster and Catster. Check out the diaries and forums. You’ll see thousands of pages of grown adults communicating through of the voice of their pet. In gamer parlance this would be their avatar or character. All our users know this isn’t ‘real’, but in a way prefer it to the real world, probably for the same reasons gamers like role playing games, which is a temporary escape from the rigors and boredom of everyday life. You’ll even see members trading items. If you befriend me I’ll give you 25 bones or prizes for user generated constests are a coveted Rosette. Our ‘virtual’ items oftentimes seem to have more value than anything ‘real.’

Here are a list of terms and concepts that have really stuck with me:

Coding Authority.
The product builders who also be default become the head of state, the final arbitrator about what can and can’t and should and shouldn’t happen in the realm they have created.

The Membrane.
The imperceptible line that divides thinking about the world as summed up as ‘real life’ and thinking about the world as exists within the terms and ‘realities’ of the synthetic world.

The Almost-Magic Circle.
This one is my favorite. For the fantasy of the virtual world to stay intact and shielded by the membrane. This means the experience of the digital world need to remain reinforced at all times. Even though it’s all fantasy no one in Dogster wants to see some evil kitty hissing and spitting, for the same reason they don’t want to see spammers or the evening news. The ‘players’ of Dogster are neither hiding out or avoiding reality, they simply are taking a break from it. They know when they log-off they have to still make the school lunches or pay the bills or get back to work, which also means while they are in Dogsterland and Catsterland they’d rather not have the Magic Circle breached by human society issues.

The removal of rules and norms leads to extended and hopeless anarchy.
Catstranova shows case-studies that every time a community has the rules removed, online players never chose to make the world a better place, it always becomes a free for all riot-like environment. My suspicion is that means online relationships have so little real trust that for the most part no one has the strength to stick together for long.

‘Virtually’ real is in actuality ‘Really’ real.
In South Korea it’s already common law that thefts and crimes committed in virtual realms are the same as the real world. Currency markets for buying and selling virtual world currencies and goods are well established and quickly maturing markets. Significant losses suffered by your virtual character can feel just as bad as losses suffered in the real world.

Castranova also pays to his strong suit and does some excellent econimic anylisis of the markets, values and economies to devine what makes they complete and suceed. Dogster and Catster already have a temporal virtual gifts that are displayed as icons on recipients pages and will soon be offerings our first fixed-value permanent virtual items, so this was very interesting to us. Thanks to Byron Deeter and James Cham of Bessemer VP for the suggested read.

There’s lots more on the topic in the interwebs.

June 23rd is ‘Take Your Dog to Work Day‘ I was interviewed on NBC’s Bay Area Today to discuss the benefits of pet-friendly workplaces. Now with 3 dogs in the office I also get to speak as a pet-friendly emplyer as well as pet-enthusiast.

Last year Dogster and SimplyHired (the best online jobs site) conducted a survey of working dog owners. We found some amazing information:

If the dog owners could take their dogs to work with them:
66% would work longer hours for same pay
55% would commute a greater distance
49% would switch jobs
32% would take a 5% salary reduction
11% would take a 10% salary reduction

The reason for the above is that if people don’t have to race home to feed or walk their dog, if they don’t have to worry or miss their dog (which they might also describe as a family member ;) they would work longer, harder and happier.

In these days of limited job security and reduced employee loyalty, proving to your employee you care about what they care about and letting them bring their dogs to work with them is akin to the promise of a gold watch. Employees will have a much stronger commitment to their employer and their job. Another wonderful benefit of dogs in the work place is that stresses and woes seem that much less worrisome when there is a sweet dog just looking for a belly rub.

Of course all this has to be considered using common sense. Some work places are not where dogs should be (e.g. factories, airports, trading floors, etc. etc.), not all people can be near dogs and not all dogs have the demeanor and control to be office dogs.

We here are Dogster recommend tall garbage cans (to not temp curious dogs), keeping extra cleaning supplies handy, and if we can we’re going to offer pet insurance as part of our compensation package. (Take that Google … actually hopefully they will take that and offer it to their employees too. ;)

Woof out….

I’m gonna try something new and post a need here instead of emailing it. We do a pretty good job being found in natural search results in related search terms and we’ve achieved a nice page rank for a community site. (MySpace’s page rank is 8 while Dogster and Catster are 7.)

Dogster, Inc. is at a place where we’d like to perform better in natural search and never having needed paid SEO advice before we don’t have an existing professional relationship. Can anyone share a positive experience with a SEO consultant or firm they’ve worked with. Or would anyone like to throw their hat in the ring?

While we’re here it’s clear the general conscensus (with lots of websites to back it up) that keyword laden URLs perform much better than id numbers. However, I’ve been reading Jill Whalen over at the excellent High Rankings for years, and she now recommends against changing URLs and many of her readers agree. Perhaps the lesson is using keywords form the get go vs. migrating ID-oriented URLs to keyword-oriented. Anyone wanna weigh-in on this?

This week Dogster surpassed 176,000 dog pages and Catster is about to break 75,000 cat pages. Together now kennel over a quarter of a million pet web pages. Our sites sure have legs (a million of them actually!)

In fact all the stats are really starting to get amazing.

Gifted virtual treats: 16,231,436

Distinct pet-to-pet friend connections: 6,588,295

Uploaded photos: 1,115,680

Forum entires: 626,388

Member-created Groups: over 2,400 Dogster groups and 1,200 Catster groups

Diaries: 23,027 Dogster members writing diaries for 29,585 dogs and 8,121 Catster members writing diaries for 11,905 cats for a current total of 41,490 diaries.

Sent private messages (aka Pawmail): 3,785,496

Dogster, Inc. cleared a new hurdle this month when we hired our very first dedicated full-time Software Engineer. After 2.5 years of bootstrapping and two of our founders coding almost everything on the site, our output will be singificantly increased.

Leef comes to us after six years building web software for Visa International and we couldn’t be happier. He’s already developed a story sharing extention for our Diary features and he is redesigning our store as I type. Pretty good for someone that hadn’t worked in PHP previously. We’ve learned that passion for the job is ten times more important than having laundry lists on a resume, even though Leef has a pretty sweet laundry list.

You can check out his dad’s dog Lucky. And you can get to know Leef better by checking out his blog.

If being a passionate coder for passionate users is what you’re looking for, we still have one Software Engineer position open.

Ok, this is my first foray into blogging, but I had to tell you about our new partner….Wag Pet Hotels. Yup, its a first class hotel for your dog or cat and unless I saw it with my own eyes I would never have believed it. Their first location opened in Sacramento and is in a 35,000 sq. ft. facility. From the circular drive-up doggy drop-off to the immaculate doggy pool and spa, it’s the most amazing facility. My memories of a pet kennel are not fond. They were always part of a veterinary clinic, smelled terrible and your pet was in a small cage next to a sick animal. Wag Pet Hotel is just the opposite. I have attached some photos below so you can see for yourself. Their next location is opening in the Fall of ‘06 in San Francisco. You should also check out their site at www.waghotels.com.

<

Are you into PHP? Wanna see some really cool PHP AJAX stuff being done with JSON (a native javascript XML-like standard)? Wanna simply drink in great creative coder passions? Wanna see the new Doghouse? Then join the SF PHP meetup group or just come on by. RSVP if you can, but not nesc.

When:
Monday, June 5, 2006, 7:00 PM 20060606T020000Z
Where:
Dogster
555 De Haro Street #350
San Francisco , CA94107
Description:
Ed Cass will be giving a JSON and AJAX

For years I’ve dreamed of having an office big enough for real collective work to be done and shared. Finally having the office (and revnues that can easily justify it) feels great to be able to help nurture the community that is at the core of what open source is all about.