Uniteddogs and Unitedcats team blog

We have some great news for you. Recently, Unitedcats passed Catster on Google Trends (an online tool that compares internet sites’ traffic):

Meow and thanks to all Unitedcats fans, who have contributed in making Unitedcats.com the most popular online community for catlovers. Now, there are 33.000 cats connected at Unitedcats, while Catster has 167.000 cat-profiles in total. Unitedcats doesn’t have so many profiles yet, but we’re growing fast with 1.500+ new cat-profiles every week.

Unitedcats loves internationality - there are cats joined from all over the world. Take a look at these cool kittens from Kuwait . The most popular countries in the Unitedcats community are:

• Estonia
• Chile
• Colombia
• United States
• Canada

Now, let’s welcome and pat all the new cats, who have just recently joined the Unitedcats community. Meow!

Thousands of followers on Unitedcats site have joined the search to reunite a lost cat with her owners.

London’s only cat vet posted videos of a homeless cat on Unitedcats last week and has been overwhelmed by thousands of responses from around the world sparking an international manhunt, or “cat-hunt”, to reunite Betsy (as she has been named) with her owners.

After being nominated last week’s “Cat Of The Week” on Unitedcats - a social networking site (like Facebook but just for cats) – Betsy attracted over 400 new “friends” every day and has received hundreds of well wishers and virtual gifts from admirers as far away as Chile, South Africa and Honduras.

Some light has been shed on Betsy’s past.  “We know from her microchip records that Betsy lived in Kew, Richmond 12 years ago but the trail goes cold there” reports Zeta Frasca of Kitten to Cat, London’s only cat only veterinary clinic, where Betsy is currently being given the attention and love she deserves after being brought in by a concerned client.

“One theory is her family moved away and Betsy just wandered back to the old neighbourhood.  A lot of people report their cats missing and they usually come back – sometimes they’ve been in a fight or had an accident – but Betsy had been reported living on the streets for nearly 6 months and was clearly malnourished.”

Betsy’s story is a wake up call for cat owners to ensure that they not only micro-chip their cats but also keep their details up to date in the registers.

Miss Frasca added “Betsy has definitely made herself at home in our clinic but she is still living in a cage and I know she’d prefer to be reunited with her family.”

People can follow Betsy’s plight on Unitedcats at http://www.unitedcats.com/cat/helpbetsy

Last week it was again time to celebrate. Since day one when we started in Estonia (the country where we live in), Estonia has always been the country that has had the most registered dogs on our sites. Until late last week. From now on, the number one country on Uniteddogs is… (drumroll) …Colombia!

That’s right, folks. Colombia is now officially the country from which there is the largest number of registered dogs on Uniteddogs. The number of Colombian dogs on Uniteddogs is nearly 10,000.

¡Viva Colombia!

Last week, the Uniteddogs and Unitedcats T-shirt e-shop was launched. We have been very excited about this concept and hope that you’ll love this new feature aswell.

Designing T-shirts have never been easier. That’s how the e-shop interface looks like:

Choose the model, size and the color-combination you like the most. Make the T-shirt even more special by choosing the Uniteddogs or Unitedcats logo and typing your very own text on the back side of the T. The T-shirt will be sent on your door, worldwide.

Your dog and cat would love this custom-designed T.

Visit: Uniteddogs T-shirts, Unitedcats T-shirts

Howdy,

How have you been? Well, Uniteddogs and Unitedcats have been quite busy working on new features and the new layout. Yes, we have a new layout now. The biggest improvement in the new layout is the horizontal menu. The reason for that was to leave the whole page for the profiles - the profiles are the most important part in the community and we wanted to give you more space for your dogs and cats.

What’s more important - now there are more than 70.000 profiles all together!

Skins

Want to change the layout of your dogs’ and cats’ profile? Choose one of the skins available and make the profile even more special. At the moment there are 5 skins all together and new custom-designed skins will be added every month. Your dog would love that!

Take a look at a skin available:

Clubs

Clubs are fun and entertaining communities on Uniteddogs.com and Unitedcats.com network that allow dog,- and catowners with same kind of interests to come together. There can be all kind of clubs: about activities, entertainment, exhibitions, fanclubs, kennelclubs and lifestyle. Everyone can create his/her own club: clubs at Uniteddogs and clubs at Unitedcats.

MySpace widget

Uniteddogs and Unitedcats are now available on MySpace. Have a MySpace profile? Show your dog and cat on your MySpace profile. Even if you don’t have a dog or cat, the widget will show popular photos from Uniteddogs.com and Unitedcats.com. You can find the widgets here: Uniteddogs.com widget and Unitedcats.com widget.

PayPal integration

From now on it’s possible to buy bonus points by PayPal. It’s easy and secure. Ofcourse you can always collect bonus points by patting dogs and cats, posting to forum, writing a blog-post etc. Besides, we’ll donate every year 10% of all our PayPal bonus points incomes to one animal protection organisation. You could help protecting the animals by ordering points by PayPal and contributing in discussions what organization we will support. More information about PayPal integration.

Woof-woof! A lot of new cool features are on the way:) Meanwhile, pat your dog or cat or just have great time at Uniteddogs.com and Unitedcats.com.

This week we’re celebrating our 50,000 pets milestone which we passed on May 4th. That is a little bit more than a year since we launched our first beta version of Uniteddogs and Unitedcats in Estonia and a little less than a year since the launch of our first international versions back in May 2007.

50,000 is not a biggie in social networking world these days. But I want to dig a little deeper. I looked at some other sites in pet social networking area. There’s Dogster + Catster, of course. They recently celebrated their 500,000 milestone. There’s also a Facebook-based Dogbook, which is used by some 600,000 users, reportedly. The biggest challenge for Dogbook is how to live within and leverage the Facebook platform. Growing out of it may be quite a puzzle for them, if they ever wished to do so.

So speaking of independent pet social networks, Dogster + Catster is currently the largest by far. A large percentage of their users are from the U.S. and Canada. In Europe, there are also some other more local sites like the UK-based Doggysnaps. In Portugal, a lot of people are hooked up with a site called Vivapets. Go to Google and search for more if you wish to, there’s plenty of them - Fuzzster, MyDogSpace, MyCatSpace, Pikapet etc. What did I find out? That their member counts are all below 50,000.

So it seems that we’ve become the second largest independent social network for dogs and cats out there. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. Conclusion? For a niche network like we are, 50,000 is a nice number Woof!

We’ve got some big news for you today. We received additional funding from investment group Ambient Sound Investments. Let me share the press release below with you all:

Tallinn, April 16, 2008 – The social networking websites for pet owners Uniteddogs.com and Unitedcats.com receive additional 235,000 USD to expand the reach of the service from the investment group Ambient Sound Investments (ASI), the investment group established by the co-founding engineers of Skype.

In the last six months the number of users has grown rapidly and now the websites unite about 40,000 pet owners. The websites are available in 12 languages from English to Croatian.

The owner of the websites, United Dogs & Cats Ltd (UDC) plans to open a new platform of the social network in the coming weeks and continue adding new languages. The company aims to secure growth by creating a global network of localized websites and add new fun and useful functions to the users.

As a result of the agreement between ASI and UDC, the investment group acquired 18% of the Internet start-up. ASI also provided the first seed financing to the company in October 2007 and participated in perfecting the service.

According to Ragnar Sass, the co-founder and the CEO of UDC the strategic partnership has provided fruitful. “We value the technical know-how and fresh ideas that we get from ASI as they help us improve the service and grow faster.”
Tauno Tats, the CEO of ASI says that UDC has proved to be a remarkable combination of determination and teamwork. “UDC has a monolithic team that can guarantee fast growth and be successful in putting all pets in the world to the web.”

The websites allow users to make a free homepage for the pet, upload and comment photos and videos, keep pet blogs, engage and share stories. It also offers new features like the Facebook application, exchanging virtul gifts and a searching for other pet owners in the same geographical area with the help of Google Maps to meet each other.

The websites are available in English, Russian, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Croatian, Dutch, Danish, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian.

Ambient Sound Investments (ASI) is an investment company of four Estonian co-founders of Skype, using its assets to fund budding international technology enterprises. ASI is mostly focusing on Eastern Europe and Russia, searching companies that are developing novel technologies or based thereon to be added to its investment portfolio. For additional information, please see: www.asi.ee

United Dogs and Cats Ltd is an Estonian Internet start-up, the founder and developer of the new type of social networking websites Unitedogs.com and Unitedcats.com. UDC is creating a network of localized websites for all lovers of dogs and cats. Currently the websites have 40000 registered users and are visited 600000 times per month. The websites represent a fun and useful source of information and an opportunity to engage with other pet owners. UDC also actively partners with animal rights organizations to raise important issues in the general public. For more information and links to local web pages, please visit: http://blog.uniteddogs.com

Additional Information:

Ragnar Sass
CEO, United Dogs & Cats
Skype: ragnarsass
info@uniteddogs.com

Tauno Tats
CEO, Ambient Sound Investments
Skype: taunotats
tauno@asi.ee

* - Hello dogs and cats! We’re now live for all Spanish speaking people in the wonderful world of dogs and cats. The Uniteddogs Español and Spanish Unitedcats Español launched yesterday and without any specific notice, we’re already glad to welcome hundreds of dog and cat owners from many South American countries.

Have a good time using the sites and in case you have any Spanish friends who want to use Uniteddogs or Unitedcats, let them know about the sites so they won’t miss the fun!

* This is how people say “Welcome!” in Croatia. Recent activity of Croatians on our English sites made us feel confident that there’d be a need for Croatian versions and so we did it. We are extremely happy to introduce the newly-opened Croatian local versions of Uniteddogs and Unitedcats.

This really makes us feel good that we have so many members who helped us setting it all up. Have friends in Croatia? Let them know about Croatian Uniteddogs and Unitedcats

Over the past few weeks we were busy with developing a Facebook application. It’s ready now! If you’re a member of Facebook then you can show your dogs on your profile page.
See application information and start using it

How to install: Go to the information page and press the blue “Add this application” button. You will then be asked for a permission to install the Uniteddogs application. After allowing the app to interact with your profile, you will be asked to log in to Uniteddogs via the application. Just enter your username and password. After logging in, you can choose which dogs you want to display on your Facebook profile.

Don’t have any dogs? You can still use the widget to show some popular photos of dogs on your profile

Don’t worry – we haven’t forgotten cats. Cats will get their own special application very soon. We just wanted to start off with dogs to see how Facebook apps work and what can be done with them.