Interesting: Catster

January 8th, 2007

Catster.

Warning: if you don’t like cats, Catster isn’t for you. Don’t read this post, and definitely don’t visit the site.

One site on the Mashable list is Dogster, which I’d pounce on if we had a dog, but we have two cats instead (one of which is proudly displayed as my avatar for Technorati and MyBlogLog) so a visit to Catster was in order. The social pet site for cats and cat lovers is made by the same folks behind Dogster.

I’m a total cat geek, so Catster is right up my alley. I suppose the easiest way to describe it is social networking for cats. You set up a home page for your feline friend, customize it, add photographs, and see how many friends your cat has or can make.

Wait, cats with friends? That sounds fishy. Cats in general aren’t exactly super social pets like dogs, but I don’t think the Catster fans care (I mean, seriously, how can Mercedes the cat have 14,000 + friends). This is just a fun site, celebrating the purr-fection of cats. I suppose the more cynical might see it as a parody of MySpace.

Needless to say, I had a great time checking out Catster. I think the real satisfaction comes from browsing tons of cute cat and kitten photos, which I realized I can actually do for quite a while. There’s a really amusing variety of cats out there — I spied one named “Mango” that was white with an orange tail.

Plus, cats are funny, as you may know from Stuff On My Cat, Cute Overload, or the YouTube videos of cats doing ridiculous cat-like things.

Besides the humor and eye candy, there’s also some useful cat information, such as a forum for discussing cat problems, a section for adoptions, and a place to ask a vet cat-related questions. There’s even a growing video section.

All in all, I enjoyed my visit to Catster. It’s a cute, fun idea which is just meant as passive entertainment. It took me no time to figure out how to get around the site and look at photos of cats. I don’t really know how useful it is, but when it comes to cat lollygagging — who cares. And this killer concept is already producing clones like Hamsterster and Lobsterster.

Note: Want your own Web 2.0 company? Oysterster is still available.

I must admit, I probably spent more time on Catster than I have any other site in quite some time. I’m such a cat nerd.