"Like Eating Glass": Sean Parker on Airtime's Bumpy Launch - Liz Gannes - Media. Photo credit: Ben Baker This is how Sean Parker — the famous and sometimes infamous entrepreneur whose legendary credits include Napster, Facebook and Spotify — described how his newest high-profile venture, Airtime, is going so far: “Running a start-up is like eating glass. You just start to like the taste of your own blood.” If that sounds very painful and a bit twisted (as well as vintage Parker), as it turns out, it’s a pretty accurate description of the state of the situation at the much-touted, heavily funded next-generation communications platform. Along with executive turmoil — including the upcoming stepping back of tech lead Eric Feng and Shawn Fanning, Parker’s Napster co-founder, who was the CEO and driving force behind Airtime while Parker was focused on Spotify last year — there has also been a very weak launch in getting Airtime off the ground.
Since it debuted in June with more than $33 million in funding, the site has only 10,000 monthly active users so far. Eric Feng. Hello World! In Video Chat Reboot, Nudists Need Not Apply. In 2009 a Russian teenager named Andrey Ternovskiy introduced an online video service called Chatroulette, which allowed perfect strangers to meet face to face over the Web. Its cleverest feature was the “next” button—a way for users to dump their conversational partner and connect with a different, random person somewhere else around the world. For many users it became an enthralling way to crisscross the globe in search of someone interesting, attractive, or perhaps just wearing a gorilla costume.
The site went viral, drawing about 1.6 million monthly users in early 2010 before ultimately fading in the face of what can only be called the “penis problem”: the impulse of otherwise rational men to celebrate a webcam chat by exposing themselves. Shawn Fanning, the creator of Napster, was immediately entranced by the service. “For the first time, you could actually surf people,” he says. Photograph by Gail Albert Halaban/CorbisFanning and Parker in the Napster days. Is it Skype or Color? Despite the flame-out of Chatroulette, the idea of fostering live real-time, one-to-one video chats with friends and strangers is still intriguing, at least to Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker.
The two Napster founders have finally taken the wraps off of Airtime, their social video chat service that is part Skype, part Chatroulette, and part SocialCam with Facebook as the layer for matching users by their interests. There are three features in Airtime: There’s a simple one-to-one, web-based video chat service that doesn’t require registration or a download. You just log-in through Facebook. You can talk to other Facebook friends and get notifications for chats through Airtime’s Facebook integration.Users can watch shared video together in real time and stay in a video chat as they view the video. For instance, you can watch a YouTube video together with a friend while also being able to see each other.
Sean Parker said Airtime is meant to be a network service similar to Facebook or Skype. The downside of all our in... Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning's Airtime Finally Launches Today - Liz Gannes - Social. Airtime, the next act from Napster co-founders Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, launches to the public today. The service is a Web application for person-to-person video calling, with an emphasis on matching people who have common interests. It has been in the works for nearly two years, and has a clear ancestor in Chatroulette, the anonymous video chatting start-up that Fanning and Parker had advised for a time. Fanning and Parker gave me a tour of Airtime last week, in preparation for a press launch today that’s sure to be full of razzle-dazzle and celebrities like Snoop Dogg and Kristen Bell. Like Chatroulette, Airtime also allows for anonymous use, but it is built on top of the Facebook platform and requires a Facebook account.
It’s unclear if Airtime will work — will people want to use it? Plus, they’ve now raised more than $35 million in funding, and have been working on this for the past two years without a public release. But why would we want to video chat with people we don’t know? Live from the Airtime launch: Can the the Napster duo strike gold with social video? Airtime, the social video chat startup created by Napster founders Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning, unveiled itself today after a long period of poorly-kept secrets and barely-muted hype. Think of it as a less-icky Chatroulette with a $33 million wind at its back.
And today, we finally got to see it in action. Parker calls Airtime the “best and fastest way to video chat with your friends on any platform.” It’s web-based, so you don’t have to download a separate applications; frictionless, since you can get started immediately without much setup; and perhaps most importantly, it relies on Facebook’s social graph, so it’s connected to identities people are already using online. At Milk Studios in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood this morning, Airtime gathered press and notable NYC personalities to officially unveil Airtime. Late night star Jimmy Fallon first hit the stage to introduce Parker and Fanning, calling them the “Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren of the Internet.”
Face To Face: How Airtime Will Re-Humanize The Internet. One minute into using Airtime I was laughing with someone I’d never met. That’s something special when despite all the asynchronous connection, the Internet threatens to make us feel lonely. On Airtime, you experience together thanks to real-time video chat and video sharing. You’re both the performer and the audience. When you look at your friend or a stranger you’ve been paired with, you get their body language, gestures, and attitude. The Internet doesn’t have to isolate us. Long ago when Airtime’s founders met over IRC, real-time chat was the medium of choice, and interactions seemed more genuine. But oer the years the groundwork was laid for a more realistic interaction medium. Flash, the technical foundation of Airtime, finally works peer-to-peer. Combined with Airtime’s design where both conversation partners share the screen equally, these permit for some of the most vivid human interactions the web has seen. It’s that last part that makes Airtime so unique.
I wonder if Airtime will rehumanize the web... Airtime: I Probably Won’t Use It, But Here’s Why Millions of Others Will. If you happened to be off the grid last week, a new video chat startup called Airtime launched, courtesy of two of my favorite “Sean/Shawns” – Parker and Fanning. I decided to leave an Airtime video message for Parker instead of shooting over the usually obligatory “congrats on the launch” email. Before I left him a message (see screenshot), I jotted down a few thoughts... I have no stake in Airtime at all, but in stock trader parlance, I’m taking the “long” position, even if Daily Active Users have taken a plunge back to ~10,000 with 150,000 MAUs.
Here are a few reasons why I’m long Airtime. Starting with the semi-obvious, the macro sector of companies that are focused on “social discovery with viral gaming mechanics, built on top of Facebook Connect / Open Graph” is hot, and it's only getting hotter. Not convinced yet? While on the surface Airtime is similar to Chatroulette, the two services differ greatly in the fact that your Airtime identity is linked to your Facebook profile. Are You Okay With Airtime Secretly Taking Photos Of You While You're Video Chatting? You Might Run Into Mark Zuckerberg on Airtime.
One Month Later, Here's What's Happened To Sean Parker's Ultra-Hyped Airtime...