Okay, I’d better start by saying that I was responsible for this site. I’m in no way impartial. In fact, DoggySnaps was probably the most fun of any social site I’ve worked on so far. It’s also been a really useful example for explaining how conversational media works. In every presentation and talk I’ve given since it launched a couple of years ago there has been a ‘DoggySnaps moment’: the slide with the cute doggies on it when even the hardest hearts melt, senior media executives go “ahh” and everyone finally ‘gets’ online community. Now, the site they call Facebark has finally received some recognition by winning Yahoo’s ‘Social Find of the Year’ 2007.

DoggySnaps is basically Flickr for dogs. In a previous life (as Creative Director of a small indie digital agency called Interesource) we created it for the UK’s leading dog welfare charity DogsTrust. The original idea was to make money for the charity through a crowd-powered rights-managed photo-library of dog images. People would ‘donate’ the rights to their images to the charity as a way of supporting its work in kind. What’s brilliant is the way it’s been embraced by a grass-roots community of dog-owners, not early-adopting power-user freaks, and used as a platform to share a collective passion for man’s best friend. I hope DogsTrust realise what a hit they’ve got. Over the past 18 months several media owners have told me they’d have loved to have had their own DoggySnaps.

So, a big pat on the head for all those who worked on it, and thanks to Yahoo and those DoggySnaps fans who have blogged about it (especially Steve Bridger at NFP 2.0). Let’s hope it keeps growing.

Tags: awards, community, doggysnaps, dogs, yahoo