The number of dedicated social networking sites for pet owners has grown by one today with the launch of
PetSmooch.
PetSmooch is a
joint venture between public relations practitioner Tirza Van Noord and Linkfinity, an information services company. Van Noord says that PetSmooch is "
Facebook without the fluff" and "
MySpace without the mess" and describes the site as the "Stanford" of pet sites.
The site launches as invitation only, and asks that interested persons make their "plea" to join through the contact form. Once members, PetSmooch users can create their own profile which can be separated into pet and pet owner profiles where users can add a blog, video, music, stories and images. The community will be able to create sub-groups - allowing them to build their own network of pets and pet owners that share interests.
PetSmooch hope to differentiate themselves from their competition by appealing to the high-end pet owner to become the "destination of choice". Linkfinity president Mehmet Efe says, "We?re targeting pet owners with intelligence, style and sophistication. For now it?s (PetSmooch) beta and invitation only.?
In the coming weeks, PetSmooch will add events, classified ads and discussion forms as well as begin forming partnerships with pet related organisations.
Other social networking sites for pets are
Uniteddogs,
Unitedcats,
Doggysnaps and PawsConnect.
PawsConnect, owned by PetHealth Inc. recently held a political campaign to discover that pets around America wanted as Hilary Clinton as their
new president.