Uniteddogs and Unitedcats team blog

Whoof-whoof and hip-hip hurray! We are proud to announce that Uniteddogs and Unitedcats had a super successful July! Our team has been working hard for over a year now and finally we all are here today to witness our great success! We have broken some records and would like to share our winged victory with all of you too!

In July 2008, Uniteddogs and Unitedcats’ sites welcomed 5.500 new profiles every week - that is 21.500 new profiles during the whole month!

Here’s a little sample of our growing popularity!

We are a friendly family of many dogs and cats as well of their owners and we all know the best for us as a constantly growing network is yet to come! We have experienced that if you listen really close you can hear our sites buzzing like a bee tree because every single user of Uniteddogs and Unitedcats has been 3 times as active as users at Dogster! In addition to our accomplishment among the pageviews in July (12.7 million) we have been doing great at welcoming special quests too – a big bunch of 400.000 unique visitors at Uniteddogs and Unitedcats in July 2008!

This is a great result and we would like to thank all our users - we would not have done it without your help! Our special thanks go to users from Colombia, Estonia, Chile, Venezuela, United States, Lithuania, Argentina, Mexico, Philippines, Canada and Italy as users of most active and fastest growing sites!

Whoof-whoof and meoooow!

Uniteddogs and Unitedcats team wants to share this great moment with you - we have passed the magical 100 000 members’ milestone! Woof! Now, 16 months after the launch of Uniteddogs and Unitedcats, there are more than 100 000 dog,- and catlovers connected at Uniteddogs and Unitedcats.

100 000 is definitely a huge number for us and we would like to thank everyone contributing in making Uniteddogs and Unitedcats the fastest growing social network for petlovers in the world.

Besides, I have some stunning facts to share with you. During this period:

• more than 500 000 photos have been uploaded;
• 320 000 virtual gifts have been given;
• the dogs and cats have received more than 4 300 000 warm pats;
• 300 000 forum posts have been created;
• 55 000 pets have been added on the map;
• more than 30 000 diary posts have been created.

Thank you once again - you’re just great!

Warm pats and tailwags:)

Mood message is a new feature, that allows you to show others what your dog or cat is doing at the moment, how he feels or what he’s up to.

The mood message will be shown at the dogs and cats profile, just below the name. Editing the mood message is really simple - just go to www.uniteddogs.com/my_dogs or www.unitedcats.com/my_cats and click on the label below your dog’s or cat’s name. The mood message can be also easily changed directly from your dog’s or cat’s profile - click on the mood message and insert something new.

For example Brock was giving hugs that morning:)

What is your dog or cat up to? Let us know by using the new mood message!

Uniteddogs and Unitedcats, the world’s fastest growing social networking websites for dogs and cats, launched Japanese version of their popular service.

“There are too many social networks for humans out there already,” the team behind the world’s fastest growing pet social networking websites say. “We love to bring people together by what they love – their pets. In fact, we like to bring their pets together,” they add.

Uniteddogs and Unitedcats are to become a new type of social networking websites that concentrate uniting people based on their interests and likes rather than connecting users with the people they already know.

The websites Uniteddogs.com and Unitedcats.com let dog and cat owners create personal pages for their furry friends, upload photos, connect and share their feelings and emotions with other pet lovers in an interactive and fun way, or even start a free blog for their dog or cat.

“Pets are a part of people’s everyday life in Japan,” the CEO, mr Ragnar Sass commented on the launch of the new Japanese version. Uniteddogs and Unitedcats sites currently unite over 85,000 dogs and cats worldwide from hundreds of countries. “We are looking forward to greeting our 100,000th member within the next month. We’re really glad that a lot of Japanese pet lovers can now become part of our network, too,” mr Sass added.

Uniteddogs’ and Unitedcats’ team has received two rounds of financial investment over the last year from a company called Ambient Sound Investments (or ASI), which is ran by the founders of Skype.

Together with Japanese, the popular pet websites are now available in 14 languages worldwide.

Give a warm pat to Cloto from Tokyo, Japan

For more information:

Ragnar Sass
CEO, United Dogs and Cats Ltd
Skype: ragnarsass
ragnar@uniteddogs.com

Visit http://jp.uniteddogs.com and http://jp.unitedcats.com

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.

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