When you have good news to spread sometimes you cannot wait to communicate this to your friends and connections like this groom from his wedding ceremony. Two local DC entrepreneurs Jen Consalvo and Frank Gruber started thankfulfor.com a venture of their new company Shiny Heart Venture which makes it conveninet for you to share your news and be thankful socially.
Jen is co-founder of Shiny Heart Ventures, a new technology start-up focused on building community driven products that remind people of the joys of life. For almost 14 years, Jen has led teams in a range of product areas such as digital imaging, social platforms and personalization. The majority of her career was at AOL, planning and building products used by millions of people globally. She is a contributing writer for womengrowbusiness.com and you can also find her at jenconsalvo.com where she writes about tech, photography & travel, bodysoulconnect.com which is focused on holistic health and twitter.com/noreaster.
In the conversation below Jen Consalvo gives more details about Shiny Heart ventures and Thankfulfor.
Q: What is the mission of Thankfulfor.com?
Jen Consalvo: The mission of Shiny Heart Ventures is to build community driven products that remind people of the joys of life. Thankfulfor is the first such product that we launched in September 2009. We believe (and science now backs it up) that gratitude is a building block to people's happiness, health and well being. So, our mission is to help people realize what they have, be more appreciative and hopefully improve their levels of happiness and general well being. These are trying times for many people - stress and depression are prevalent everywhere we look. We want Thankfulfor to be a positive place for individuals as they create and reflect on their own gratitude journals, as well as for all visitors as they come to view one of the most inspiring places on the Web. And because Thankfulfor posts are distributed across other social networks (Facebook, Twitter), we hope its positive effects are far reaching.
Q: Share some great stories of how people have used Thankfulfor.com
Jen Consalvo: We're still new and growing but we feel so grateful to have had some good press resulting in thousands of people setting up their gratitude journals and even more coming through just to read the "public stream of thanks". The community is really amazing and we're starting to hear more and more from them. Around Thanksgiving we had a teacher in Florida (Miss Heidi) contact us because she had her entire class of little kids posting what they were thankful for. She then wrote a blog post about the experience for our blog. Alexis Rodich, who writes about working in a tech start-up for the Washington Post, has written numerous times about her experiences with Thankfulfor and how the practice has helped her diffuse her anger at times and also increased her own sense of abundance and generosity. We hear similar stories from others.
Q: What is your opinion of fund raising and philanthropy using social media tools?
Jen Consalvo: In terms of causes, nonprofits and philanthropy, from my view, social media tools are giving a new shape to fund raising. My level of traditional media consumption has decreased dramatically in recent years, so much of my awareness of giving opportunities comes from my social networks. I'm also very attracted to organizations who make an effort to utilize today's tools to lower their overhead costs as well as clearly communicate to me on a regular basis how they are using my funds - telling me, showing me, taking me on a vicarious voyage of sorts. If I look at the charities or institutions that have my mindshare (which is a huge challenge given all the noise out there), they are the ones who have most aggressively leveraged social media tools, shown me their story very clearly, and infiltrated my personal network in some way.
While Thankfulfor is a for-profit venture, we see a huge opportunity to work closely with nonprofits because it is a good fit for our audience. As Alexis pointed out in her article, there is a link between gratitude and generosity. When people feel poor, they're not going to give. But when they feel abundant, their psychological ability to give increases. We've already worked with one small fundraising event and had people across the world showing us what they were thankful for as they contributed money to a good cause. And looking through another lens, companies and causes can use Thankfulfor as a vehicle to give thanks back for the people who extend their time and money. We have lots of ideas around this and plan to make some a reality in 2010. We also plan on building out more robust community and distribution features this year, and begin working with partners and testing new revenue streams to reveal Thankfulfor as a self-sustaining business that can provide a global impact for the long term.
For anything that you are thankfulfor head over and socialize it.
About the Author
Shashi Bellamkonda is Director – Social Media & Social Media Swami of Network Solutions a company that works together to help small business succeed online with web hosting, do-it-yourself website builder software, online marketing tools and domain names. Visit Shashi Bellamkonda's blog. Shashi is a regular contributor to the DC Examiner and Tech Cocktail. This article contains the opinions and observations of the author and may not necessarily reflect those of Network Solutions or its clients or partners.
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