On Friday, September 17th, I attended a lecture on the website, Texts from Last Night, (http://www.textsfromlastnight.com). The lecture was hosted by the two creators, Ben Lator and Lauren Leto. These two friends started this website late one night in February 2009. The website grew at an astonishing rate overnight. This is a website where can voice your opinions to comments about your drunken experiences. What is great about the website is that you post your comments anonymously. Due to the success of this website Ben and Lauren have a full time job; it is a bona fide business. Ben and Lauren created a website where the poster can write whatever they want without fear of revealing themselves and this is a freedom that can be quite fun. Unfortunately, not all entries can be posted due to the volume of the website. I looked it up on the Internet and TFLN receives about 3.5 million page views a month. During the lecture Ben stated he is the reader of all those posting!
While I cannot argue about their success and the Internet has made quite a few people rich, what these two people accomplished is impressive. I think that is the point to how the Internet works. Here are two students going to school to get a degree, so they can be a success. They were not looking to get rich, but to entertain their friends. Now they have a million dollar business, with merchandise, book deals and an upcoming television show. Speaking of their book, during the lecture, there was a raffle to hand out copies of their book based on their website. No, I did not win one of their books, but the students that did win seemed very excited. As, I sat there I began to think about the attraction of this website. I realized college students and teenagers need something that is their own, even if it is about a drunken night and the morning after. I agree with Stephanie, Ben and Lauren sure do know their audience.
Janet we did have a fun time didn't we. Even though Ben & Lauren started out being very dry, their entire concept is a hit. It's amazing to me how people jumped on this bandwagon and Ben & Lauren have made tons of money by just letting a website evolve. They can sit back, collect the profits and basically this idea runs itself.
ReplyDeleteJanet, I am sorry I wasn't able to attend this lecture. It sounds like it was very interesting, and it definitely piqued my interest. I will be checking out their website out of curiosity now (when the kids aren't around!) and I might even have to look for their book. It's amazing how an idea that's so simple can turn into such an explosive business!
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