The latest from TechCrunch
- (Founder Stories) Lauren Leto: Texts From Last Night Was A Million Dollar Idea, Bnter Is Next
- NYT Updates Its iPhone App With Push Alerts For Breaking News, New Subscription Plan
| (Founder Stories) Lauren Leto: Texts From Last Night Was A Million Dollar Idea, Bnter Is Next | Top |
| As a law student, Lauren Leto and her friends started Texts From Last Night , a site where they could anonymously posts real text messages about their exploits going out at night. It turns out a lot of people could relate, and when they opened up the site to anyone to contribute, it became a Web sensation. Today, the site attracts 4 million people a month, 5,000 to 15,000 submissions a day, and the 99-cent iPhone app has been downloaded a million times. It also spurred a book deal for Leto. Not bad for a bootstrapped startup site that only took $20,000 in capital to get off the ground. In the Founder Stories video above, Leto tells host Chris Dixon how Texts From Last Night got started and how she quit law school to move to New York City from Detroit. She ended up in Brooklyn at the Makery , a co-working space with other startups, which she talks about as well. In the second video below, Leto gets into her latest startup, Bnter , which is a way to capture text messages and publish them publicly. In that sense, it is the opposite of Texts From Last Night. Or, as Leto puts it, Bnter is “Texts From Last Night pulled inside out. Texts From Last Night by its very nature needs to be anonymous, otherwise it will ruin your career.” Bnter, which has its own iPhone app and which raised money from Dixon’s Founder Collective among others (disclosure: he is an investor), is more about capturing interesting moments. Leto compares it to a social photo app, except its textual. It will also work with Twitter conversations. “Anywhere you are having a conversation we want to capture it,” she says. CrunchBase Information Lauren Leto BNTER Chris Dixon Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| NYT Updates Its iPhone App With Push Alerts For Breaking News, New Subscription Plan | Top |
| The New York Times , struggling to find its place digitally, has just released an iPhone update today, three days before its paywall plan is put into action. Well what’s new? In addition to an interface touch up and the option to swipe between stories, the app now has Recently Viewed items at the top of it’s Sections section, followed in order by Photos and Video, which were not at the top before. The update purportedly will add more videos and slideshows to the app, so the re-prioritization of these options makes sense (and also cents, as these two content types have proven to be the most addicting for readers). The NYT Blogs like Dealbook and Media Decoder have (finally) been relegated to their own section, at the bottom of the app. Most importantly, in this age of Twitter, the app now has push notifications for breaking news (which users can enable in Settings) which means that you’ll actually be reminded to use the NYT app. Twitter share and Facebook share options are also available. These notifications and reminders could be crucial to user engagement once the NYT paywall goes up on March 28, as only the Top News section of the app will remain free and users who want to enter other sections like Blogs or Video will have to become digital subscribers starting at $15 for every four weeks (print subscribers will have unlimited digital access). And if you think you can get around the paywall by just not updating the NYT app you’re out of luck: Come Monday, users will have to download the updated app in order to access any content. You can find the app in the App Store here. CrunchBase Information New York Times Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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