Brits get a little creepy with their love of animals sometimes. In Korea dogs are slapped between two pieces of bread, here in the UK, we buy them Christmas presents and convince ourselves that we can fully communicate with them Dr Doolittle style. Now, I'm not saying let's eat our dogs, God no; but can we stop treating them like small children and dressing them up, getting them birthday cards etc. The same goes for cat lovers too, who are just as bad. You're thinking, what's all this got to do with gadgets?
So what could connect mollycoddling pet owners with technology? Like most things these days, the answer is social networking. People up and down the country are making Facebook pages for their pets. And it's not just a handful of Simpson's style creepy cat ladies either. It's one in ten of us. Plus, more than half of UK pet owners are sharing photos of their pets online, which seems a bit more reasonable than inventing an online identity for a pet.
And it gets worse, as if Facebook wasn't bad enough pet owners are flocking to pun-centric animal networks such as Critter, Catster and Doggie Dating. But there is use to all this eccentricity; it fills charity pots up, which can't be bad.The New York-based owner of a cat called Romeo (pictured above) has raised more than $50,000 in two years and amassed nearly 10,000 followers.
Stephen Davies, a social media specialist, said that the phenomenon was not as peculiar as it might appear. "As social networking plays an increasingly important role in our lives, it's only natural that our pets become part of the phenomenon too. We use sites like Facebook and Twitter as an extension of our real-world selves and when we think of our pets as part of the family we want them involved too." He added that "there is an insatiable pet demand online."