FOX NEWS COVERS CUTE AS HELL

Fair & Balanced Cuteness Coverage.

EXAMINER.COM INTERVIEW

When was your company founded?
Cute as Hell was founded in October 2008 in sunny Venice, CA. Our beta launch was March 13, 2009.

What's the story behind how you started the company?
My wife and I were looking for a website for our pets - a dog and two cats. We found a few pet-related sites, but none of them had the functionality we wanted while still being well designed, easy to use, and uncluttered. Having a strong creative background and having worked on quite a few start-ups, I figured why not build my own - and voila - Cute as Hell was born.

What is your company all about?
Cute as Hell is a new community and shopping site made exclusively for pet people. It's a place where your dog, cat, fish, or anything else for that matter, can have their very own pet profile with photos, friends, comments, and more. You can also win fabulous prizes going head to head in the Thunderdome (an NCAA-style bracket competition where you can win cool prizes), rate products, and buy hand-selected products that have been reviewed by the community.

Coming soon: ask pet-related questions, find a shelter, donate to pet charities, locate pet services like vets, groomers, dog walkers, rescue organizations - and more!

How is your company different than your competitors? Competitive advantages?
We're trying to keep it simple and we're always thinking about what will create the best user experience. We have large photos, a clean design, simple navigation, and an easy-to-use interface. Most of our competitors focus on jamming as much content (and ads) onto the page as possible and forget about the most important thing, the animals. It's all about the pets with us.

We've implemented a simple, yet very viral component called a "Cuteness Rating" which has turned out to be extremely popular with our site users. You can "plus" the Cuteness Rating on any pet you like. The higher your Cuteness Rating, the better odds you have at competing in the Thunderdome.

What are the main challenges your company faces?
We have the same challenges as any unfunded start-up - if you don't have an active, growing community that gets people to come back over and over again, you don't have a site. So our user acquisition strategy is the key to the site's survival. Fortunately, it seems to be working. Seven days after the site's beta launch we had over 1,000 pets and almost 3,000 photos added to the site, and we received over 100,000 page views. These are huge numbers for the first week of a newly launched site that has no budget for PR and advertising. Word of mouth, SEO, and our own viral marketing efforts have gotten us to where we are today and we are excited about what the future holds!

We're also working on some strategic partnerships and sponsorships that will make our prize package offerings even better and will give us the ability to continue to launch new features at a steady pace.

Finally, what's your goal for the next few months?
The current version of Cute as Hell is just the beginning. Over the next few months we'll be adding a pet services section where you'll be able to find local animal shelters, vets, groomers, pet sitters, dog walkers, etc. We'll also be adding informational breed pages, videos, an iPhone app, and a new "hot or not"-style section open to registered and non-registered users called the Battlezone. The Thunderdome and upcoming Battlezone will get people to come back to the site over and over again to see how their favorite pets are doing and to meet new cute pets. So, stay tuned! We're one week in and thrilled at the reception so far. We're hoping to bring something new to the table that resonates with pet people just like us.

CUTE AS HELL WEEK 1 NUMBERS

Not too shabby for only being 7 days into the game with no PR!

1,187 Registered Users
1,029 Pets
2,829 Pet Photos
649 Pet Comments
26 Product Reviews
524 Product Ratings

13,037 Unique Users
103,934 Page Views
7.97 Pages Per Visit
5:12 Average Time on Site

Big thanks to Neal, Alex, and Lisa for making this happen!

ACTION NEWS PHILLY SPOT

By Erin O'Hearn - We all know how social networking has changed the face of communicating, reconnecting and making new contacts. So why should your best buddy be left out of all the fun? One website says there's no good reason at all.

Whether it's an encounter in the local dog park or a quick sighting at the pooch grooming salon, your pet needs a way to stay in touch with friends too!

A new online community lets you show off your pet's profile and cuteness factor to friends and other pet owners. The website, which features close to 1,000 pets, functions much like Facebook...

Keep Reading | Watch Video

CUTE AS HELL: PET SOCIAL NETWORKING GOES VIRAL

Cute as Hell is a new social network for pet owners that just launched in beta. It’s created by Erick Laubach, who also has a travel social network called Driftr under his belt.

Pet-related social networks aren’t exactly scarce, but Cute as Hell is interesting because it takes several tried and true viral concepts and integrates them into the network. It can probably best be described as a cross between Cute Overload, Hot or Not (for pets) and MySpace. Two features that make this so are the so called cuteness rating and the Thunderdome . The former lets visitors rate pets by their cuteness, while the latter is a tournament where pets can compete for the title of the cutest pet.

The advantage of this approach is the fact that the site can be fun even if you’re not part of the social network; you can merely browse it for cute animals. Considering the popularity of sites like Cute Overload, it might bring in a significant number of visitors. It also engages users to participate in the site more, instead of just maintaining their pet’s profile and adding friends.

Other features currently available are social shopping (users can rate and review products), comments and photos; videos, Facebook and iPhone app, as well as questions and answers are coming soon.

Stan Schroeder | Mashable