Puppies and Webcams

I'm sure we have all used Webcams at some point to communicate with loved ones away. Ustream, a site used for conferences and chatting, has exploded after a live video feed of 6 Shiba Inu puppies went viral.

And trust me, they are cute.

"The flurry of attention began last month when a Bay Area couple’s pet Shiba Inu, a kind of Japanese hunting dog, gave birth, and its owners decided to train a Webcam on the newborn pups so they could keep an eye on them from work," reports the New York Times.

The site was created as a way for soldiers to stay in touch with their family, reports the same article.

And the puppies have drawn the attention of people across the globe.

Even CNN reported on the live stream.

But there is one comment on the NYT site that caught my eye. One smart reader could be on to something.

"I suspect this puppy site is part of a Ustream viral marketing campaign to drive eyeballs-for-ad-dollars and grow the base of Ustream users. There’s nothing wrong with viral marketing … just wish people better understood how it works. It seems more likely that the sudden dramatic website traffic didn’t result simply from a Ustream employee seeing the site and sending the link to friends and family … after all, the originators of the site (puppy owners) no doubt sent the link to their friends and family and it didn’t suddenly go 'viral.'"- Laurie

In the aforementioned articles, they do say that the couple wishes to remain anonymous. It makes you wonder whether the owners of the puppies are really people working at Ustream. In fact often times, readers have to wonder why there are news stories about something in the first place.

As the same commenter pointed out, both the NYT and CNN have used the viral video to address the First Family's desire to get a puppy. This has generated so much buzz alone, and doing this story could be a way of keeping a non-newsworthy story in the news.

Either way, we see you cant go wrong when combining cute puppies and Webcams.

Erin