Thoughts of Dog is brought to us by Matt Nelson, the same guy who created the blockbuster We Rate Dogs account. Nelson became a social media sensation from the unlikeliest of locations: an Applebee’s in North Carolina.
On November 15, 2015, he and a few of his friends were there after a golf tournament when he brought up the idea of @dog_rates. “I saw other people doing extraordinary things in 140 characters — making me laugh and making me feel things in that limited character space. I got addicted to that challenge as well,” he told Money. “I realized dogs were a very hot topic on the internet. If I wanted my writing to reach more people, I wanted to utilize these adorable dogs.”
After issuing his first-ever rating — an 8/10, by the next morning the account had 3,000 followers. Nelson’s inbox was soon overflowing with dog owners asking him to rate their pets. Now, the follower army of the legendary account is over 8.4 million strong.
