PetOwnr: For The Animal Lover In You

I have to give PetOwnr credit for finding an untapped niche in the social networking sphere. This is the first social network service I've seen that is geared toward the animal lovers and pet owners out there. Now you can find like minded people online who really do want to see all those pictures of your hamster.

PetOwnr is in its beta stage, and you can tell. The overall colors are another nice change from the ubiquitous green and blue of most Web 2.0 sites, maroon and white. Unfortunately the snazzy colors and rounded logo aren't complemented by a seamless interface.

PetOwnr appears to be fueled by ads, which is fine. You have to pay for your Web 2.0 launch somehow, and ads are as good a way as any. The placement of the ads is unpleasant - a large banner between the masthead and the site page information. I thought the ads would relocate after joining the site, but that isn't the case.

After joining, you are taken to your profile page, where you see options to add pets, friends, an avatar, a profile and the usual social networking information. The first thing I noticed was that the site is very clunky in appearance and even clunkier in interface. The nice round edges and smooth look stop at the logo, it seems.

I also had trouble with load times on the pages, and it took an unreasonably long time to upload an avatar and pictures of pets. I also noticed there is really no way in the profile to talk about your pets, which I thought was a glaring oversight in a web site geared to people who want to talk about their furkids all the time.

Navigating the site is simple enough. You can browse by Pets, Ownrs, or Stories. You can also head straigh for the Forums. The Forum interface is pretty standard, and the site is new enough that the particpation level is still hard to judge. Pets and Ownrs show up as avatars or photos sorted by name or category.

The feature of the site I was most interested in are the Stories people share about their pets. The Stories interface was a little odd. I kept trying to find a link on the actual stories page to write a story, but eventually realized that the only place to add a new story was on my profile. That's fine, but not a very intuitive place to put that link.

On the home page you can see some of the new features they are planning. The most notable of these is the Lost Pets feature. I think that will be a great way to enhance the usefulness of their site, especially if they can integrate it with the national databases from the Humane Society of America, ASPCA and other agencies.

All in all I think PetOwnr is a great concept that was launched a bit too soon. I know open betas are for hammering out the bugs and problems a site faces in the beginning, but at least have the interface operating smoothly before you send the word out about your new site. As a pet owner, I will be checking back in a month or so to see if they have ironed out some of the issues. I hope they do - they are sitting on a great idea.