WeRateDogs (@dog_rates)
Type of site
Twitter account
Available inEnglish
URLtwitter.com/dog_rates
LaunchedNovember 15, 2015; 8 years ago (2015-11-15)
Current statusOnline

WeRateDogs is a Twitter account that rates people's dogs with a humorous comment about the dog. The account was started in 2015 by college student Matt Nelson, and has received international media attention both for its popularity and for the attention drawn to social media copyright law when it was suspended by Twitter based on false Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaints.

History

Nelson, a golf management major at Campbell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina, was inspired by Weird Twitter and had amassed a 10,000-person following on his personal Twitter account.[1] In 2015, he and a friend were at an Applebee's, when he set up a Twitter poll from his personal account asking if he should create a dog rating account; the positive response led him to create the account, which combines cute animals with irreverent snark.[1]

WeRateDogs asks people to send photos of their dogs, then tweets selected photos rating and a humorous comment. Dogs are rated on a scale of one to ten, but are invariably given ratings in excess of the maximum, such as "13/10". Popular posts are re-posted on Instagram and Facebook.[2] In 2017, Nelson started a spin-off Twitter account, Thoughts of Dog.[1]

The account also has a branded game, a popular online store, and a book that was published in fall 2017.[1][3] Nelson and his team of four receive 800 to 1,000 submissions daily and work to narrow them down to about one high-quality piece of dog content per day.[4]

A standout product[citation needed] from Nelson is the WeRateDogs Calendar, available in standard and desk sizes. Each day of the desk calendar features a different dog and a rating above 10.

Impact

As of December 2020, the Twitter account has nearly 9 million followers,[5] and Nelson sees 30,000 likes on a post as being viral.[1] His most popular post was of a dog marching in the 2017 Women's March, which was retweeted more than 50,000 times and favorited 134,000 times.[1]

The account's language helped to popularise the "DoggoLingo" Internet language that refers to dogs as doggos and puppers.[6] A 2016 interaction with another Twitter user, when Nelson purposefully misnamed him "Brent" as is common in Weird Twitter, spawned the catchphrase "They're good dogs, Brent", which became one of the biggest memes of 2016.[7] In 2017, the account was endorsed by J.K. Rowling.[8]

WeRateDogs has successfully used the account to raise money for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), as well as individual GoFundMe campaigns.[9][10][11][12] In 2020, the account raised $1.3 million for more than 170 dogs.[13]

In October 2017, Nelson released a book based on the Twitter account, #WeRateDogs: The Most Hilarious and Adorable Pups You’ve Ever Seen.[5]

Copyright issues

WeRateDogs brought media attention to copyright and suspension policies on Twitter when the popular account was closed twice because of spurious Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaints brought by competitors and unknown accounts. "For Nelson and many of his fans," wrote The Washington Post, "the whole ordeal has raised some serious questions about whether it’s simply too easy for pranksters to successfully remove content from the Internet by abusing the copyright claim process, particularly on Twitter."[14][15][16]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f "How WeRateDogs Turned a Pet Project Into Profit". Esquire. 2017-05-15. Archived from the original on 2017-05-16. Retrieved 2017-05-15.
  2. ^ "This Weird Dog-Rating Twitter Account Gets 10/10". nymag.com. Archived from the original on 2017-03-14. Retrieved 2017-05-15.
  3. ^ Nelson, Matt (14 September 2017). "#WeRateDogs: The Most Hilarious and Adorable Pups You've Ever Seen". Amazon.com. ISBN 978-1786853486.
  4. ^ Anwar, Mehak (13 March 2019). "WeRateDogs' Matt Nelson Is Responsible For The Captions On Your Favorite Dog Photos". Elite Daily. Retrieved 31 December 2019.
  5. ^ a b "The founder of "WeRateDogs" on building a doggo empire". Archived from the original on 2017-10-02. Retrieved 2017-10-02.
  6. ^ "Dogs Are Doggos: An Internet Language Built Around Love For The Puppers". NPR.org. Archived from the original on 2017-05-15. Retrieved 2017-05-15.
  7. ^ Ohlheiser, Abby; Ohlheiser, Abby (2017-01-05). "How an online fight about dogs became one of 2016's greatest memes". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Archived from the original on 2017-01-30. Retrieved 2017-05-15.
  8. ^ "A "14/10" Interview With the Guy Behind the Amazing We Rate Dogs Twitter Account". Complex. Archived from the original on 2017-06-04. Retrieved 2017-05-15.
  9. ^ "Lee Moran, "There's Way Too Much Cuteness In This New Dog-Rating Twitter Feed," Huffington Post, Dec 12, 2015". HuffPost. 12 December 2015. Archived from the original on 2016-09-19. Retrieved 2016-09-12.
  10. ^ "Kelli Bender, "WeRateDogs Is the Canine Hot or Not of Twitter", People, Dec. 9, 2015". Archived from the original on 2016-09-23. Retrieved 2016-09-12.
  11. ^ ""Bored College Student Spawns Wildly Popular WeRateDogs Twitter Account, Fox News, June 8, 2016". 31 August 2016. Archived from the original on 2016-09-07. Retrieved 2016-09-12.
  12. ^ Alison Lynch, This Twitter Account Is Rating People's Dogs and Its Adorable, Archived 2016-09-30 at the Wayback Machine Metro UK, December 7, 2015
  13. ^ Locke, Taylor (2021-01-21). "Matt Nelson founded We Rate Dogs as a teen—now it's a booming business that's also raised over $1.3 million for dogs in need". CNBC. Retrieved 2021-02-03.
  14. ^ "Abby Ohlheiser, "The Internet's most famous dog rater keeps disappearing from Twitter", Washington Post, February 11, 2016". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 2016-09-19. Retrieved 2016-09-12.
  15. ^ AJ Dellinger, "Bogus DMCA claim temporarily takes down one of Twitter's best dog feeds," The Daily Dot, Feb 10, 2016 Archived 2016-09-02 at the Wayback Machine/
  16. ^ "Clinton Nguyen, Twitter's Most Harmlessly Charming Account Was Mysteriously Suspended, Vice, February 9, 2016". 10 February 2016. Archived from the original on 2016-09-21. Retrieved 2016-09-12.

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