I was sitting in a Starbucks in Oakland last week with Sam Wick from Meca (the IM company) with hours on our hands because of meetings falling through. Sam and I were chatting about social networking, and Sam mentioned Dogster, saying that the site was a great example of a very targetted, niche social networking offering that was likely to survive any market changes. Sam is a smart guy.

I mentioned that I 'knew' Ted Rheingold, the guy behind Dogster, and that he lived in San Francisco. I called Ted up, and he met us for lunch around the corner from the offices of his design firm: One Match Fire.

Ted turned out to be a great guy (despite his looks, see cell pic above), and Cafe Stella Luna was great too. Best of all, we learned a lot about Dogster (see my writeup: Social Networking Goes To The Dogs), whose membership has grown to over 20,000 and which has grown to something much, much more successful than Ted had ever imagined.

Best of all: Catster is coming!