This week, Napster co-founders Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning reunited to reveal their newest start-up, Airtime, which promises real-time one-on-one video chats between strangers, and the ability to watch YouTube videos with your new friends. The goal is to bring "serendipity back to the internet," the same way Aol chatrooms connected like-minded strangers in the '90s. And unlike the more contemporary and creepy Chatroulette, conversations with strangers on Airtime won't be anonymous. The service syncs with a user's Facebook account and encourages discovery through shared areas of interests. Parker and Fanning promise that the nudity problems that doomed Chatroulette won't be an issue, thanks to a one-strike-and-you're-out policy and technology that purportedly blurs out genitalia. "In layman's terms, Airtime is like Chatroulette without the penises," says Harrison Weber at The Next Web. Is that a successful formula?
Yes. Airtime will humanize the web: The internet, particularly Facebook, "was starting to get a bit repetitive," says Josh Constine at TechCrunch. But Airtime brings intimacy back to the web thanks to its emphasis on shared interests. When two strangers start talking about a book, movie, or band they care about, "discussions turn to what makes you two similar, but different from the rest of the world." To put it simply, Airtime "makes it seem like you've known someone longer than you have." Expect big things.
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