Sean Parker, along with Shawn Fanning, former Napster founders, launch a new social video sharing platform called Airtime (Image: jdlasica (CC) via Flickr)
Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, former founders of Napster, have teamed up once again to venture into a new platform startup for sharing videos called Airtime.
Sean Parker’s huge stake in Facebook has made him a billionaire, and he greatly appreciates being a Silicon Valley celebrity.
Parker and Fanning unveiled Airtime last Tuesday in New York City. In attendance was a heavily assorted group of Hollywood celebrities and artists, including Kristen Bell, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Martha Stewart, and Snoop Dogg.
Airtime’s concept resembles that of Chatroulette, which revolves around real-time live videos. Chatroulette became popular because it connected strangers from various places around the world and let them video chat. During 2010, it became a very popular startup but quickly disintegrated, as it became an avenue for indecent, lustful behavior.
Apparently, the same thing can happen to Airtime.
(Image: via venturebeat.com)
The heavily hyped startup has gained support from huge investors such as Google Ventures, Accel Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers. Together they raised 33 million dollars for Airtime.
Fanning and Parker first started Napster in 1999, a file sharing service that made sharing online music popular. It shut down in 2001 because of a huge number of lawsuits on copyright infringement. Napster came back, but now it is gone for good after merging with Rhapsody last year.
After Napster, Parker was still very much on the scene, as he became Facebook’s company president, and an investor and board member of Spotify.
About Neal Alfie Lasta
I enjoy learning and writing about social media and the latest in mobile updates.
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The problem with this service, and many of the services and apps that come out these days are that they are restricted to Facebook users. I don’t user Facebook user, therefore I can’t use this service. Or rather, they would like you to believe, of course I can use it, just signup for FB and be another piece of data for both companies to collect. Sorry. Companies need to give end users a choice for connecting to their services. Creating a FB-only login, especially when FB is on the decline, is just senseless. But then again when you have a bunch of billionaires playing with each other, this is what you get. Must be a nice bubble to live in over there in Silicon Valley…only problem is the real world is starting to see that it’s just a group of guys making each other rich while the rest of us struggle to survive. So great work raising money and creating another totally useless service. The thought of watching my friend watch a video that I’m watching is just stupid. How bout having some real in-your-face time. The world would be a lot better off without billionaire chuckleheads like these who think they know what the world needs and wants. But in 5-10 years when the bulk of the world becomes introverts with no actual social skills in the real world, we’ll see where we’re at. In the meantime, I won’t be helping Zucks or Parker get richer. I will be watching the FB stock continue to tumble.