Like most things, the best text messages happen late at night. There is something distinctive about a nocturnal text - exposing, intimate, revelatory, sometimes plain drunken. Other people's make for gripping reading, which might explain why each morning around 10,000 messages from the night before are posted on a website, Texts From Last Night, devoted to the genre. Each reads like the shortest of short stories. "Well, its 5.30am and you haven't let me in, I guess I'll go home," says one. "I knocked on some stranger's door, you didn't have to give me a fake hotel room number," says another.
The site was set up in February by Lauren Leto, a 22-year-old law student, and Ben Bator, a 23-year-old "almost" law student, after "more than a few good weekends" of their own. All messages published are anonymous, and Leto and Bator say the site creates a sense of camaraderie, and helps, they say, to "convey the feeling that the person is winning in the game of life".
The duo live in Detroit but, intriguingly, most of the messages come from Manchester and London.
