Dogster, Inc., – makers of vibrant, passion-centric, pet-centered community and information sites and blogs – is looking for an energetic, multi-skilled graphic and web designer to join our design team. This is a part- to full-time contract position working at our offices in the Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco.

We are a five-year old, financially secure business and we love what we do.

Responsibilities:

• Developing creative solutions for in-house marketing and editorial campaigns
• Working with Senior Designer on design and production of marketing campaigns/promotions for advertisers
• Working with Editorial Manager on production of weekly email newsletters, including editing html templates, and image design and selection
• Designing custom buttons, promotional images, banner ads as needed for the sites
• Designing original static and animated icons
• Some projects will involve direct implementation of fairly complete concepts developed by advertisers or others on the design team – taking another designer’s work and developing semantic, standards-based HTML/CSS and implementing it into the code base in concert with the development team
• Other projects will entail designing complete layouts from rough wireframes or conceptual designs and carrying the project through to production
• Working directly with engineers on site features, enhancements and updates
• Testing and QA of new site features

Qualifications:

• 3-5 years professional experience in web design
• Highly proficient in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator
• Highly proficient in HTML and CSS
• Self-motivated, ability to work independently to implement creative and editorial direction
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced iterative development environment, which includes initiating projects, delivering on time, communicating well, and following-through
• Exceptional attention to detail
• A love of pets and a sense of humor
• You value working in a fun environment, on a small team, with people you like

If you meet all of these qualifications AND have more to offer, Please email portfolio samples or URL, resume, and letter of introduction: jobs[AT]dogster[dot]com

Dogster, Inc., manages and operates the largest online entertainment and information destination for dog and cat lovers. We are a five year old financially secure business and love what we do. We’re not scared to put in the long hours, but also enjoy our loves outside of the office.

Sarah Lacy wrote an article about Dogster over on Tech Crunch, to let people know about our upcoming ad sales partnership with our buds over at I Can Has Cheezburger!

We’re super excited to be working with the I Can Has Cheezburger group of companies and look forward to developing this relationship further! We know you know about I Can Has Cheezburger and Hot Dog, but make sure you stop by FailBlog and ItMadeMyDay.com and check out what else Cheezburger founder Ben Huh and his gang are up to…

Click here to read the whole article over on Tech Crunch.

Three of the biggest Groups in the Dogster community, The Best Lil’ Doghouse In Dogster, Tiny Paws And Furiends Cruise Line & Miss Dixie Monroe’s “Dixie” Land have decided to have an end of summer block party bash.

You’re invited, of course. It’ll be going on in all three of those groups simultaneously.

One question I get a lot is “do people meet and fall in love on the site?” The answer is yes, but not often. What has really surprised us, however are all the tales we hear of people that met on the site becoming very good friends in real life, even when they life thousands of miles apart. People are definitely not bowling alone when they spend time on Dogster.

But here’s a woofderful story where a site friendship led to a in-person friendship which led to a romance and marriage which led to a likely life-long friendship of two families.

I made friends with a lady, via Dogster. At the time I lived in N. GA, she lived in S. GA. Eventually, by pure coincidence, we moved to S. GA and my Dogster online friend became a real life friend. The first time she visited my new home, she brought her daughter along. Her daughter noticed a photo of our oldest son, who had just moved to Alabama. She commented that she thought he was handsome. I thus gave her a way to contact him, just for fun. To make a long story short… Our son moved to S. GA just six months later. Now our son, and my friend’s daughter are engaged to be married next year. They have lived together for over a year now and are deeply in love. Our families have become very close to each other.

We so happy for them all! Just one question can we be a Groomsdog at the wedding?

UPDATE 9/21/09: This position is now filled. Thanks

Here’s some very exciting news. We are seeking one awesome Editorial and Content Manager to oversee the entire Dogster, Inc. family of properties. The position is full-time based in San Francisco. The formal details are below but here’s who we really want you to be:

• » you are a perfect grammarian. You can write persuasive copy in your sleep and copy edit in a dust storm
• » you understand social media as if you were born into it
• » you relish a challenging fast-paced work place
• » you value working in a fun environment with people you like
• » you are awesome
• » you love animals
• » you love the Internet

The Editorial & Content Manager will be a critical trusted member of the team and responsible for:

• » writing highly effective copy for site features
• » consistently improving and updating all existing web content
• » managing a blogging and freelance writing staff of 5 – 10
• » writing weekly member newsletters for both Dogster and Catster
• » tracking open rates, click through rates and other key performance indicators for newsletter, blogs, and homepage editorial sections
• » writing highly effective copy for site features
• » providing quality control over all site copy
• » copy editing company documents
• » assisting the Business Development Team with marketing copy
• » writing and programming the dynamic leads and other homepage content.
• » finding new content sources both online and off and deploying and tracking it’s effectiveness
• » instigating and managing the viral distribution strategies of Dogster/Catster, utilizing social services such as Digg, Stumble Upon, Facebook and Twitter, among others.
• » communicating with and responding to blog readers, site fans, newsletter readers and twitter/facebook followers, via email, blog comments, twitter, wall postings, etc.
• » being a creative force for the company
• » staying up-to-date on pet-owner trends online and off.
• » staying up-to-date on Internet and publication trends.
• » reaching out to pet people wherever they are on the Internet
• » contributing to the evolution of “the voice of Dogster/Catster”

In addition to possessing expert social networking and social bookmarking skills, the ideal candidate will be aware of the latest pet- and animal-related Internet trends, and will be able and comfortable to follow and use evolving jargon and lingo in order to communicate effectively, efficiently and dynamically with our members, visitors, and followers, in attempt to further promote and distribute Dogster and Catster content.

The ideal candidate will understand how reader-targeted communication efforts are critical to our companies continual growth and expansion. He or she will demonstrate the ability to think creatively and work well independently. He or she will be familiar with the entire family of Dogster, Inc. properties and will communicate openly and regularly with the Dogster, Inc., team, presenting ideas, suggesting material, and coordinating cross-promotional support when appropriate.

he ideal candidate will be sensitive to and aware of the Dogster.com and Catster.com communities and can tailor updates (and writing style, in general) to appeal to the particular needs and desires of our Dogster and Catster members.

More desired qualities:

• » creative
• » funny
• » ability to write in a connecting way with our members
• » reliable
• » self-motivated and driven
• » strong work ethic/disciplined
• » organized
• » detail-oriented
• » stats junkie
• » knowledge and appreciation of blogging, vlogging and micro-blogging
• » love for dogs and cats
• » ability to learn from mistakes and not dwell on them

Qualifications:

• » 5+ years professional writing experience
• » Professional experience in a web environment
• » Expert knowledge of social networking and bookmarking tools
• » Deep understanding of internet concepts such as: page view, unique visitor, bounce rate, exit rate, SEO and keywords
• » Deep understanding of Internet virality, memes and trends
• » Familiarity with Google Analytics or other analytics tools
• » Commanding expertise in English language usage and grammar
• » Familiarity with HTML and CSS

If you meet all of these qualifications AND have more to offer, please send your resume and cover letter to: jobs[AT]dogster[dot]com

Dogster, Inc., manages and operates the largest online entertainment and information destination for dog and cat lovers. We are a five year old financially secure business and love what we do. We’re not scared to put in the long hours, but also enjoy our loves outside of the office.

Dogster, Inc is an equal opportunity employer and we mean it.

This is a full time, on-site position in San Francisco, CA. Working remotely is not an option due to the highly collaborative work requirements.

Best team on the Internet!

Learn more about us

Big thanks to Yahoo!’s Dustin Whittle, Senior Tech Yahoo!/Open Evangelist, for a great presentation on developing Web Services (i.e. APIs) using the PHP Symfony Framework. Yahoo! wrote/rewrote Answers, Delicious, Bookmarks and much more in Symfony and we’ve been using it for a number of recent projects and a number in the pipeline. It’s significantly reduced development time on complicated projects and provides with a very robust unified platform for future products.

Congrats to Paul Thrasher, our Lead Engineer who has been organizing the events. Attendance was already double the first meet-up and a number of companies were represented. If you want to learn more about Symfony or share how you are using it, join the Bay Area Symfony developer’s group and make it to an upcoming meet-up.

UPDATE 9/21/09: This position is now filled. Thanks

Contractual Software Developer Needed to Integrate Facebook Connect

Project description and need:
Dogster, Inc. is seeking a contractual developer to fully integrate Facebook Connect into Dogster and Catster. We will be allowing members to register and login via Facebook Connect as well as link their Dogster/Catster accounts with their Facebook account. We will also be using the FB social graph to connect existing friends, cross-post uploads and more. Developer must have previous experience with FB Connect, FBML and javascript and have previously integrated Facebook into large online properties.

Developer must also be experienced in LAMP technologies (PHP, AJAX, HTML, CSS, MYSQL) for integration on the Dogster/Catster platform. References and access to your previous implementations of FB Connect required. You must be available to work with a product manager and proficient at working from specs, mock-ups and project plans.

This is a contract position and not a full-time position. However, for the right person it could evolve to full time.

To apply:
Email cover letter and resume to the username “jobs” at our website’s domain of dogster.com.
Include several references, public examples of FB integrations and compensation requirements.

About us:
Dogster, Inc. is a seriously fun company to work with based out of Potrero Hill, San Francisco that has been serving Internet goodness since 2004. We have a great team, highly passionate users and are very financially stable. Two of the founders are still active developers and the whole team contributes to the sites’ success and growth. While we think it would benefit both parties if you were in Bay Area and able to meet/work in our San Francisco office regularly, it is by no means a requirement. If you live outside San Francisco and solid references, lots of public, related projects under your belt we’d be more than happy to work with you.

UPDATE 9/21/09: This work has been completd. Thanks

Contractual Software Developer Needed to Build Dynamic Site Toolbar

Project description and need:
Dogster, Inc. is seeking a contractual developer to build and integrate a dynamic, HTML overlay toolbar similar to those on Digg, Facebook and other sites. The toolbar will be dynamic in the sense that content and height will change based on user profile, user status, current promotions or other product directives. The toolbar must work on all major browsers and properly layer over elements such as flash.

Developer must be extremely competent in HTML layers, browser-specific issues, AJAX as well as LAMP technologies (PHP, HTML, CSS, MYSQL). References and access to your previous implementations of similar functionality required. You must be available to work with a product manager and proficient at working from specs, mock-ups and project plans.

This is a contract position and not a full-time position. However, for the right person it could evolve to full time.
To apply:
Email cover letter and resume to the username “jobs” at our website’s domain of dogster.com.
Include several references, public examples of previous toolbar or overlay work and compensation requirements

About us:
Dogster, Inc. is a seriously fun company to work with based out of Potrero Hill, San Francisco that has been serving Internet goodness since 2004. We have a great team, highly passionate users and are very financially stable. Two of the founders are still active developers and the whole team contributes to the sites’ success and growth. While we think it would benefit both parties if you were in Bay Area and able to meet/work in our San Francisco office regularly, it is by no means a requirement. If you live outside San Francisco and solid references, lots of public, related projects under your belt we’d be more than happy to work with you.

It’s no secret that welcoming visitors to your site that are coming from a known location increases those visitors’ primary engagement metrics. Pages per visits and time on site goes up, bounce rate goes down.

Where this becomes extremely interesting is when that traffic is coming from a social bookmarking site. We get a lot of traffic from StumbleUpon, so in our blogs we set up dedicated messages to welcome returning and first-time Stumblers. It has changed spikes of traffics into long run-off ramps. The importance of this referrer message was driven home when we a cat blog entry became a thumbs-up hit on StumbleUpon but we had forgotten to activate the refer message.

This screen shot shows a spike of 12,309 visitors from StumbleUpon on April 12th to The Cat’s Meow, our cats and kittens blog with another 3,100 visits since then.

The second screen shot shows a spike of 12,180 visitors to Snuzzy our cute and fuzzy blog on January 27th that led to another 80,000 visitors in the ensuing 2 weeks.

These results may be above average, the next time we get a hit from StumbleUpon to our cat blog (after we’ve resumed showing the helpful message to Stumblers) I’ll post the results. But without a doubt the blogs that have Stumbler referrer messages no longer see towering visitor spikes and instead show much more meaningful long run-off ramps.

UPDATE: 4/21/09
Some readers did not understand why referrer messages are so effective for visitors from social bookmarking sites. To clarify I’ve added a screenshot of the message shown to a repeat visitor from StumbleUpon. Note that the first option is for them to StumbleUp. We also quickly remind them what content we post on our site, make it easy for them to join our community on SU, as well as subscribe to the blog feed, and also to join our community and explore some existing crowd-pleaser posts.