• From the Penguin Blog

    The recipe for success on the Internet is a maddeningly abstract concoction that is mostly a combination of mistakes. We had things that were better deserving of our time for starters (law school for Lauren, unemployment for Ben). Also, we both had way too much experience in our subject matter for anything else, so we pretty much had to make this site work.

    Somewhere along the line, it did. We started Texts From Last Night for our friends in February 2009. We opened it up to the public in April. Within days, our site went batshit viral.

    Even before the book was a reality, we always had a list of texts that were destined for something more than our homepage. Practically overnight we were compiling those lists into a manuscript that would become this book. Little did we know that a TV show was lurking in the near future, thousands of custom t-shirts would be made and sold and our iPhone app would soon join the Top 25 list in the App Store. It all just sort of happened.

    It’s not all keg stands and Cristal though. TFLN, believe it or not, is still a job. Our days are spent in front of a computer, squinting at the 15,000+ texts in 9pt font. It’s a struggle to weed out the recycled jokes and vomit-inducing “lady humor”, but we also get to laugh at things like (240): I think god invented the sun to punish me when i drink too much. Overall, it’s better than law school.

    Our book is the magnum opus of our website. As told through texts, the book has a Relationship Timeline, a Hookup Flowchart and a Choose Your Own Adventure section. We also have categories of texts such as “Gay Pride”, “The Morning After” and “Phone Mishaps”.

    We went through every page of our site to find the absolute funniest texts for the book. Then we went through every text ever submitted (at the time was something like 1.1 million of them), so we could fill the book up with some never-before-seen texts that we were too hungover to spot the first time.

    It’s not the best coaster, but it looks damn good on a coffee table. Display it proudly, laugh hardily, live like it’s last call and keep texting.

    Love,

    Ben & Lauren

    The book is out and available everywhere books are sold. To buy it online, go to book.textsfromlastnight.com

    check out the original post on Penguin’s Author Blog here

    January 27th, 2010 by BB News No Comments »

  • Things look a little different, right?

    We decided to change things up a bit with a new design and new features for 2010. Before you say “WTF was so wrong with the old one?” remember that TFLN works the same as it always has, now you can just do more.

    • You can still submit, only now you can do it from your phone via SMS.
    • You can still see, comment on and rate texts, only now you can pick your favorites and share them with your friends.
    • If you sign up for an account, you can keep track of the texts you submit to TFLN.

    There’s a lot more than that, and now that we actually have a blog, we can tell you all about those things when they go live. We can also tell you to buy our book, creatively titled Texts From Last Night on January 26th, or just pre-order it now.

    Suggestions? Bugs? Love it? Hate it? Tell us by filling out a feedback form.

    January 11th, 2010 by BB News No Comments »