No, the Pets Next Door iPhone app (free) is not social networking for animals. That would be silly. Dogs don’t use iPhones. It is, however, social networking for people who have pets.
Having just been released mid-December, Pets Next Door does not yet have enough members to make it truly useful quite yet — there were only a few pets showing in my area. There is a companion Web site as well, so users of Pets Next Door don’t need to have an iPhone—the app allows you to see pets in your current location.
However, if you’re a rabid animal lover (and I’ve yet to meet a pet owner who isn’t), you’ll probably find Pets Next Door to be really entertaining. It is, in a word, cute.
Users can upload photos and stories about their pets, view the photos and stories about others’ pets, “like” them and leave comments for their owners.
Like everything else on the Internet, there are some idiots who post weird photos, and a lot of kids who are only capable of writing in text-speak. My concern with kids using the service is that it might make it easy for predators to find kids using the information they’ve posted on Pets Next Door, but I’m paranoid.
I’m hoping to find someone who has sheep for pets, so I can bring my Border Collie Finley over to herd them.
