What happens when two intelligent young men get together and brainstorm about how a group of animal lovers like themselves can keep in touch online while looking after the welfare of animals offline?
Answer: They invent Petfie Petfie is a new and unique social networking, photo sharing and community application. It allows users to create profiles for animals, for example, cats in the neighbourhood area, so that people can follow the lives and activities of these animals!
Care and help for the animals is available in an instant!
So, how does one go about using this app (available on iOS platform only currently) which works on the concept of geotagging?
Step 1: Download the Petfie application from the Apple App Store for iOS (Petfie for Android will be made available in December 2014)
Step 2: Upload a photo of your pet, animal/cat in the community and save information such the location, breed, age and other features
Step 3: Follow the development and life of other cats/animals in the community while posting comments, tips and updates
Jerome Chan, 26, SMU post-grad (Masters of Science and Innovation) and co-founder of the app said that it has been a tiring but fruitful one-year journey for him and his team of five. As someone who feeds and cares for stray cats, Jerome desired to create an animal centric platform which would allow similar minded people to likewise share their love and care.
Since its launch, Petfie has successfully registered 100 users of the app. The app is also a good way for residents in a neighbourhood to get to know each other and bond over their community pets and animals. Petfie has also partnered Cat Welfare Society to help in the latter’s sterilisation efforts. Users of Petfie can create animal profiles for unsterilised cats and tag it with the ‘Sterilisation Needed’ status and anyone can bring the unsterilised community cats to specific vets or 24 hour animal hospital for free sterilisation. This effort comes under the ‘Stray Cat Sterilisation Programme’ (SCSP) and more information can be found at http://www.catwelfare.org/catsnip
