CBS Corporation (NYSE:CBS) is partnering with dog social network, Dogster.com to push their upcoming show, Greatest American Dog.  The media company is premiering the new show on Thursday July 10th.  The Greatest American Dog will also be promoted at hot dog stands in New York, video displays in supermarkets, cable advertising, and dog walking teams in New York.

CBS placed ads on Dogster.com that states “you’re going to sit, roll over, and beg for more in the search to find the greatest American dog.”  Dogster is also hosting teaser trailers of the show and has created profiles for the contestants of the show.  The show will be promoted in Dogster’s Dog Blog and newsletter. 

“The in-store component of the GREATEST AMERICAN DOG campaign makes use of motion sensors and video screens in the pet food aisle of selected grocery stores in New York and Los Angeles,” stated CBS Corporation Communications.  “Shoppers who come within a few feet of the sensor hear a bark, and are invited to press a button that initiates a thirty-second video clip.”

The Greatest American Dog will be hosted by Jarod Miller and the show will have 12 contestants.  The winning contestant will get about $250,000 in cash.

Related Links:
CBS
Dogster.com

When Tim Berners Lee and Robert Cailliau invented the world wide web 17 years ago, I don’t think that they would have expected anyone to use their technology for competition in who has a cooler social network for their dogs and cats.  Yet two competing social networks for dogs and cats do exist and I’m questioning who will be the reigning champion.

MyDogSpace and MyCatSpace are owned by NextPulse Ventures, who also owns a plethora of other companies that involve animals in the names.  This includes DateMyPet.com, DomainMonkey.com, and MyFatKat.com.  NextPulse’s motto seems to be “We take ‘crazy’ ideas and turn them into reality.”  And I would agree that these were crazy ideas, but similar ideas actually exist, so there’s more than one crazy out there.  That other crazy is Ted Rheingold, founder of Dogster and Catster and his pets are more than just house broken.

Dogster has about 310,000 users and Catster has about 129,000 users.  Dogster launched in January 2004 and Catster launched in August 2004.  Dogster had received funding from the likes of Michael Parekh and Michael Arrington.  And last month, Dogster was listed as one of the top three companies in Advertising Age’s “Rethink Your Web Strategy Or Fail’ article^[1].”

However, MyDogSpace and MyCatSpace are benefitting from the name MySpace.  I wouldn’t be surprised if a ignorant user would believe that both MyDogSpace and MyCatSpace were actually a subsidiary of MySpace.  I also believe that by simply having an easy-to-remember domain name, MySpace traffic skyrocketed.  This is a benefit that MyDogSpace and MyCatSpace have right now.  The disadvantage with this situation though is the legalities of having similar names can be disastrous (Similar Case: Alexaholic vs. Alexa).

For now Dogster has nothing to fear… for now.  MyDogSpace doesn’t have as many resources as Dogster, but in a play on a phrase by Mark Twain, “It’s not the size of the MyDogSpace in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the MyDogSpace.”

[1] Dogster Inc. Company Blog: AdAge Names Dogster a Top-Three Site
[2] Yahoo! Tech – Gina Hughes: Social Networks for Pets (and Their Owners)

Hilary Duff, popstar/actress has announced that her pet Chihuahua, Lola now has a profile on niche social network, Dogster.com.

Dogster.com was founded by Ted Rheingold in San Francisco around January 2004. Dogster rose like a phoenix from the ashes of the out-of-business niche pet sector websites such as Pets.com. Now the website has over 275,000 accounts and 350,000 photos. Advertisers such as Disney and Holiday Inn have also targetted Dogster for promotion.

“Lola is the best, and she has such a great personality. I am excited that she is part of the Dogster community so people will get to know her, and she’ll be able to get to know all the other top dogs out there,” Duff said.

Dogster has raised $1 million in funding by several angel investors including Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch.

Duff’s dog has been featured on many magazines, made an appearance on David Letterman, and even has a character featured on Electronic Arts’ The Sims 2: Pet Edition.

Lola Duff’s profile is available at http://www.dogster.com/dogs/489342. Duff’s participation may just set off a trend for other celebrity dog owners to create profiles. Although I highly doubt Britney Spears and Paris Hilton will do the same since they are the World’s Worst Celebrity Dog Owner according to Hollywood Dog and New York Dog magazines.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CS8sItnhus[/youtube]

TechCrunch blogger, Michael Arrington announced that he was one of the investors in the social networking website for dog lovers, Dogster and its sister site, Catster. Dogster attained a round of $1 million in funding last week and is in the top 10,000 most visited websites according to Alexa.

Arrington discussed in a TechCrunch blog post that the reason why he chose to invest in Dogster, even though Dogster’s founder, Ted Rheingold does not own a pet, was because the founders were able to manage operating costs efficiently and Dogster was profitable within 2 years of its inception. Another reason why Arrington invested in Dogster was because Michael (Mukesh) Parekh joined Dogster’s Board of Directors.

Mukesh is a former partner at Goldman-Sachs and was a lead research analyst for Yahoo! and eBay’s intial public offerings (IPOs). Mukesh also has a blog called Michael Parekh on IT.

Clearly this is a smart investment by Arrington as the entrepreneurs behind Dogster and Dogster’s new management team have a solid technical background and have attracted big name advertisers. If you have a dog, I highly suggested logging onto Dogster and joining the community.