Airtime: Flop Or Not?

In 2011, Sean Parker reunited with Napster co-founder Shawn Fanning to found the flashy video-chatting site Airtime.com. They picked up $33.5 million in funding (crunchbase) from some of the biggest names of names in Silicon Valley namely Super Angel Ron Conway, TechCrunch own’s Michael Arrington and technology startup investor, Actor Ashton Kutcher. Parker is serving as an executive chairman and Fanning as CEO. After a strong Introduction two months ago and with the July 16th slick and carefully crafted promotional video, created by the viral marketing powerhouse Portal A, it looks like that Airtime is not making any ‘airtime’ amongst the billions of daily internet users. In early July Appdata shows that Airtime had around 200,000 daily active users, but that number has gradually tapered off since then. But like many other social media sites I personally feel at a certain point it will kick off. Cnet stated in a July 28th article that Instagram passed their 80 million users that means 30 million new users have started using the app in less than three months. I feel that progressive entrepreneurship’s like Instagram, Pinterest, Path, Fancy and Airtime will eventually lead to more global understanding of the concept of Belongingness. The Airtime video reminded me a lot of a brilliant quote from Jeremy Rifkin: “We know if a spider goes up someone’s arm, and I’m observing it going up your arm, I’m going to get a creepy feeling. We take this for granted, but we’re actually softwired to actually experience another’s plight as if we’re experiencing it ourselves. But mirror neurons are just the beginning of a whole range of research going on in neuro-psychology and brain-research and in child development, that suggests that we are actually softwired not for agression and violence and self interest and utilitarianism, that we are actually softwired for sociability, “attatchment” as John Bowlby might have said, affection, companionship, and that the first drive is the drive to actually belong”. It’s an empathic drive. Besides that the Airtime interface, product is simply brilliant and we must not forget Biz Stone (Twitter) famous words: “Timing, perseverance and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight succes”