Dogspotting
What is dogspotting?
I just learned about this today and thought it would be fun to bring it to your attention. Back in 2009, a man named John Savoia, a Boston USA resident, formed a small Facebook group for his friends called Dogspotting. It started off as a simple game of taking pictures of random dogs and getting points for uniqueness.
As a Fine Arts Photographer, John had been walking around and taking photos of dogs. Savoia had the thought that it would be fun to give himself points for the photos he was taking and from there, it progressed to a Facebook group game with 20-30 of his real life and internet friends.
John Savoia never knew what caused a sudden spike of interest in the game in the summer of 2014 but all of sudden he was getting dozens of requests per day. Friends of John’s, also founders of the Facebook game, Reid Paskiewicz and Jeff Wallen, together with John, put together a system of rules to give the game structure.
For all the exact rules in the Facebook
group, you can go to the Facebook page here..there are basically 12 rules.The game began with a simple point system (everyone keeping track of their own points) and just a few members but is now based on the number of Facebook ‘likes’ that a dog spot gets. The sheer size of it’s membership, 400K and climbing, made it necessary to use the ‘Like’ system to keep track.
Every year a “Top Spots” album is posted, it might seem like all the rules and constant moderation take the fun out of Dogspotting, but the points and structure are what keep the game fair and a fun place to be.
Not into Facebook?
Try the new Dogspotting phone app, for Apple and Android phones. The game is free and you can find it under the heading of Dogspotting mobile or Dogspotting LLC. I just downloaded it onto my smart phone (apple). I have signed into the App and honestly, it looks like a lot of fun. For dog lovers only 🙂
Instead of ‘likes’ as in Facebook, the game records ‘pats’ instead, which really makes sense if you think about it. The app has a T shirt store as well, where you can buy Dogspotting related T shirts and gift cards. You get ‘bone’ rewards through your dogspotting that you can redeem towards the T Shirts. Pretty cool! Get a peek to the dogspotting mobile app here.
And now you know what Dogspotting is 🙂
For the page Trauma
For the page Little things lead to big things Part Two
