Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning, the founders of Napster, launched a video-chat service called Airtime on Tuesday in a star-studded event.
The video chatting service was performed by Hollywood actor Jim Carrey, talk show host Jimmy Fallon, TV star Joel McHale, rapper Snoop Dogg, and Actress Oliva Munn. Although the stars were not given the full opportunity to show the live chats as the demo of the service encountered technical problems making some stars’ chats broke down during the launch, the event excited the online community.
Described as a “social video network”, Airtime is a start-up by Parker and Fanning who are very confident of their new web project.
“We're trying to restore serendipity to the Internet. There's never been an environment like this for live performance on the Internet,” said Parker.
The live video chatting service is available now as a Facebook app. All the Facebook users can use Airtime to video-chat with their friends and the suggested people based on shared interests in the social media website. Users may be connected to their friends of friends and others around their locations.
The set up of Airtime is similar to Chatroulette, a website that connects users randomly to strangers for video chats. The main difference is that users must have a Facebook account, which will be their identity. While Chatroulette pairs users up from the entire Internet community, Airtime chooses from users’ Facebook friends only and suggested common interested people.
Parker and Fanning are considered tech geniuses, finding the music-sharing service Napster ten years ago. They didn’t expected Napster to grow so wild that millions of music fans downloaded it and shared music illegally, provoking piles of lawsuits with big music companies which eventually led to closing of the company.
Parker later became the first president of Facebook and helped Mark Zuckerberg build the popular photo app. His Facebook stock is worth more than $2 billion.
Parker characterizes the transformation he sees in the tech industry in Silicon Valley.
“People have lost sight of the power of technology to change the world. I mean, no one's really interested in - I shouldn't say ‘no one.’ But in Silicon Valley, there seems to be a lack of interest in the cultural implications or the societal implications of technology. I think that will start to change.”
So far the main video services on the Web include Microsoft’s Skype, Google’s Hangout service and some websites such as Chatroulette. Based on the 950 million Facebook community and a software-free video network, could Airtime be the next big startup of Silicon Valley? You can share your opinion.
