I like Airtime. Any new company that has the two guys behind Napster behind it was always going to face a tough time when it launched. There was no small amount of Color-esque moaning about the amount of money they raised. People sniggered at the opening day glitches. Others still feel that Sean Parker’s portrayal in ‘The Social Network’ is effectively a live documentary feed of everything that happened in 2005 and 2006. Others again like it. I’m in that camp.
I have a confession. I was always predisposed to like anything that Parker and Fanning did post-Napster. That app was a reasonably big part of my school/college years. Obviously - like Bill Clinton, I never inhaled. Like Playboy magazine – I used it 'for the articles'.
However, in my zeal to prove my innocence, I digress. The fact that it was started by two people who met on IRC only added to its mystique. I am a child of the IRC generation. Large swathes of the late 90s centred largely around hastagged chatrooms where I honed my skills in typing, one liners and troll-baiting (or debating).
This was back when people thought I was suffering from some sort of mental issue when I met online friends offline. I was pretty chuffed to be going on dates wtih smart people I’d met online. Some of my friends and family thought I needed to be sectioned. They took the view that the Internet was filled with proto-Dahmers, rapey overweight lunatics and a cast of millions that wouldn’t look out of place as extras in a Tim Burton movie.
They were wrong. The people on the Internet were like me, except smarter, funnier, more skilled and more open. Surely, like me, some of them were never going to trouble David Bailey’s lens on a fashion shoot, but isn’t that most of the population? Maybe some of us were a little socially awkward – that’s why IRC was amazing – you could talk about anything to anyone and you didn’t need to worry about whether you’d missed that awkward spot on your upper lip when shaving or whether or not you had food in your teeth.
I miss IRC. I miss the mayhem. I miss arguing with strangers, occasionally being a dick and usually having a brilliant time talking about life, the universe, everything and the number 42. I learned more about life, love, hacking, music, movies, comedy and myself in black and white chat clients than I ever did in school or college. I met people who critiqued my early journalism work – who criticised some of my (frankly bizarre) early startup ideas. I met people who were total randomers – total strangers who came into and left chatrooms (and by extension my life) on an ad hoc basis.
So when Sean Parker and Shaun Fanning talked about how that element of the Internet had died out a little – I agreed with them. When I first started going online in the 90s – everyone was a stranger. A handful of my friends were online, but most of the communities, bulletin boards and chatrooms that I used were populated almost entirely by people I’d never met and was never likely to meet. That was the original disruption the Internet brought into my life. That was what made it great. It was open. It was all a bit odd and it was all amazing.
The last ten years have changed things a lot. Instead of using the Internet to connect with and chat to total strangers, we’ve slowly started building little walled gardens around ourselves – connecting with people we know in the real world and engaging with them online. Admittedly, services like Twitter and Instagram do encourage some level of connection with strangers. They’re still a lot more selective in terms of the viewpoints you’re exposed to than any sort of chatroom or bulletin board service.
When the Airtime guys talked about rediscovering that whole area of chatting with strangers, my interest was immediately piqued. IRC, message boards and other communities and chatrooms still exist obviously – they just seem like anachronisms in the modern world. Maybe what Evan and Biz are trying to do with Branch will address the bulletin board side of things a little – but that’s still a work in progress. It's no chatroom. The closest thing that we've had to a real shakeup in random encounters online in the last while was Chatroulette.
I don’t think anyone would disagree with the fact that the insane success of Chatroulette was at least validation of an idea that may have already existed or been discussed between the folks behind Airtime. Once you got over the bacchanal of penises on display, Chatroulette was a pretty funny experience. I always thought that a slightly more segmented and moderated version (along with some additional features) would work wonders – and that’s what I figured the guys from Airtime would do.
To an extent, that’s what exists now. I won’t go into an exhaustive description of what the platform does – check it out for yourself and you’ll see lots of pros and reasons to engage. You’ll also see cons and things that will put people off.
Chatroulette worked really well cause you didn’t have to talk. You typed. Airtime feels a lot more like a real social interaction, which can be a bit offputting if you decide you want to use it to talk to someone when 4am insomnia strikes. You can only talk to one person at a time so far. Chatrooms allowed you to carry on tons of conversations at once – one with the main room and multiple private/group chats. While that had a tendency towards information overload, it still worked really well.
With that said, I think there are massive opportunities for Airtime. I think there are some very cool partnerships that would be pretty easy to set up which would allow sports fans to talk/argue/bait one another during major events. There are media partnerships that could take advantage of this to create real time fan debates which could easily be adapted for TV.
It has almost limitless potential in education circles. Again – simple partnerships could create a platform that students could use to connect with and learn from one another. Students learning language from native speakers would be amazing. Getting some local help for history assignments would be easy. You could even allow experts to bill for their time (with a cosy 30% share of revenues generated going to Airtime). Build in some game elements, points and rewards and the potential gets even bigger.
Sean Parker talked about eliminating loneliness when he initially discussed Airtime. To me, this is the most personally interesting idea. My granddad told me that he was lonely a while back – after my granny passed away, he was at home on his own a lot. It struck me that an Airtime type app in a Smart TV would allow him to chat to like minded folks about football, fishing and everything else he’s interested in. There isn’t a child, grandchild or great grandchild alive who wouldn’t chip in some money to pay for some moderation and verification on a service like that. Guilt can be a powerful motivator...
To people who are busily knocking Airtime’s user numbers or scoffing at the ambitions of Parker and Fanning, I say give it time. They’ve got a brilliant idea waiting to happen. To fellow fans of IRC – if you’ve found a replacement for it on your smartphone, tablet or computer – let me know. If not, maybe I need to start thinking harder...