A Comprehensive Review of Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker’s “Airtime”



In the documentary “Downloaded” we learned about Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker’s company, Napster. 12 years on in 2012, Shawn and Sean teamed up once again with the release of their new startup, “Airtime”. It began as a website similar to Chatroulette, where users could interact with people online. In the end, it failed to get many users, and was shut down the following year. Parker believed the app was too technically ambitious for its time. After some reworking, “Airtime” was released as a mobile phone app in 2016. Upon hearing this I wanted to try it out.

A Glorified Facetime
The basis of Airtime is that you can video chat with your friends while running background media such as Movies, Music, Youtube. The only problem was when I would used the app, it felt more like a grainy video call with a buffering video. It has added features like a chat mode and emoji reactions and sounds which can be a lot of fun.

Network
Airtime Is best feature is how you can use to interact with your friends. I managed to convince some of my friends to get the app with me in order for the best experience. Everyone has their own “room”, and everyone who you are friends with can join that room. Rooms are where you can play videos and video chat your friends. For the most part, everyone's room contains a different set of people. This allows you to create different spheres of interaction, which was my favorite part.

Just For Fun
Most importantly, you have to realize that the only viable use of Airtime is for fun. There is no relevant purpose other than to mess around with your friends. I had the most fun with airtime when we were simply watching silly videos, not actually attempting to communicate with one another.

This time, the Sean and Shawn duo attempted at another which could've been profitable, if not for the lack of users, exactly opposite to the Napster. In the end they're collaborations are 0/2.


Sources:
https://techcrunch.com/2012/03/25/sean-parker-and-shawn-fanning-open-new-social-video-startup-airtime-for-business/
https://www.businessinsider.com/sean-parkers-airtime-now-has-millions-of-users-video-chatting-2017-8
https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/21/11476334/airtime-ios-android-app-sean-parker-group-video-chat
https://www.recode.net/2016/4/21/11586312/sean-parkers-revives-airtime-group-video-app

Comments

  1. AnonymousApril 11, 2019 at 10:30 AM

    11/10 content!! Hahah nice pics too! I agree with your description of Airtime. It felt pretty slow and the quality of video wasn't as high as it could be, but it was fun... for a while. After watching videos together the opportunity cost of not being able to fully see the video or hear your friends, in comparison to say having a higher quality face time with them made more sense to ditch the airtime. Although the idea of Airtime was unique, I think with better quality it could have made it big.

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