MyThankYou.com becomes a hit online
Brandon Eller has struck a chord with a simple act:
Saying “thank you.”
Eller, a 28-year-old Spokane resident who grew up in Sandpoint, launched MyThankYou.com earlier this month. Within five days, the site had some 1,500 registered users, Eller says. The number has since grown to about 2,700.
“This world has so many wonderful things going on on a daily basis, but so many people are stuck on the negative,” he says. “There needs to be a place like MySpace or Facebook … where people can go and say how thankful they are.”
So, Eller teamed with a Web-savvy friend and MyThankYou was born. Just a few days later, a producer for Dennis Miller’s nationally syndicated radio show found the site during a random Web search. Eller was a guest on the show two days in a row.
“This is just humanity working,” Eller says. “At its core, people are just saying ‘thank you.’ “
Members have posted their gratitude for a range of things, from the mundane to the profound. From having a warm bed to sleep in to finding some M&Ms in a desk drawer to having a mother to love them.
Like in this first post from Eller:
“I am soo thankful for this wonderful life.”
Or this one from MeFun1 to “the nice guy at SCC (Spokane Community College)”:
“Thank you to the guy at school this morning who held open the door for myself and another girl (going into bldg #1). It doesn’t happen very often, and your chivarly was very appreciated.”
Or this post by Gretchy:
“My Mothers breast cancer is in remission and I am so thankful to God and my family and all of you out there!”
With so much snark and meanness on the Internet, Eller has had surprisingly little trouble with it creeping onto his MyThankYou. He has only had to ask two posters to choose less provocative photos for the site.
“This isn’t a place to advertise yourself,” he says. “This is a place for you to give back.”
Until a couple of months ago, Eller worked at Fairwinds Retirement Community, helping residents adjust to the transition of moving from their homes. His work there for two and a half years was the main inspiration behind the Web site, he says.
“Working there I found a piece of me I didn’t know was inside of me,” he says. “Just the appreciation of what their generation has done for us.”
Eller is currently unemployed and is living off his savings while he sees what direction MyThankYou takes him. Despite outside interest, he says he has no intention of selling the site and would only accept advertising from community-minded groups.
“I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night knowing, hey, I just gained financial treasure from everybody e-mailing saying they’re thankful for their brother or their sister,” he says.
But Eller does have big plans for the fast-growing site.
Within the next month, he plans to model the site after Craigslist, with separate pages for communities around the world.
“We’ve just had an overwhelming amount of people overseas,” he says. “We will have different languages … There’s so much wonderful stuff going on around the world and we all tend to forget about that.”
And Eller, for one, is thankful for all of those wonderful things.