Social Meow-dia: Pets on Twitter

I walked into my living room one day to find my cat, Sophie, sitting on my desk. She had a browser open to what looked like a Twitter page. Upon closer inspection, it was her own account!

She’s been using the service under the moniker @SophieCatface since December it seems, posting thoughts on her litter box mishaps, naps and snapshots from TwitPic. She’s still a kitten, so her grammar isn’t perfect, but she’s so cute that she can get away with it.

In all seriousness though, I thought it would be fun for my newly adopted cat to have her own Twitter account, so I wouldn’t annoy my followers with new pictures of her and whatnot. To make it fun, I decided to tweet everything from her perspective.

Little did I know, there is a huge community of pet twitterers out there!

It might seem lame to some, but it can be hilarious to see what other pets are “saying” to each other, and it can be amusing to interact with them — #FollowFridays, LOLspeak and all.

Many of them only follow other animals, and even go as far as keeping the list within their species. I’ll admit, it makes me giggle when I find a cat’s Twitter account only to see a bunch of cat avatars under the “following” section of the profile. Think celebrity is only for humans? Well, Sockington the cat is one famous feline, and with over 1.5 million followers he beats out CNN.

Finding out more

I wanted to see if there was any kind of organized group of pets on Twitter, and after doing a Google search I found Petfeed.

Part of Sawhorse Media, best known for the popular Shorty Awards, they have a pretty extensive list of websites under their belt — maybe you’ve heard of Listorious? Petfeed is just one of Sawhorse Media’s sites created to curate Twitterers of a certain type. Petfeed’s design is adorable, easy to navigate and they even have their own trending topics.

Other sites include Ink Pill for designers and Tech Picnic for tech bloggers. In order to be added to any one of the sites, all you have to do is submit a short form, filling in a few fields about yourself, or in this case, your pet.

Community

Sophie’s first taste of social media was on Facebook, where I found an application called Catbook. It’s another good option to keep your pet’s shenanigans and pictures separate from you main feed — without making a new Facebook profile.

All in all, I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the huge community of people that are as passionate about their pets as I am — and like to tweet for them.

After all, the Internet is made of cats.

[Image of Sophie via loupe]