Updates over Media, Marketing en Publishing
Activism platform Causes has just acquired political advocacy startup Votizen. With Causes’ massive 186 million-strong user base and Votizen’s tools, together they’ll break down barriers to civic engagement to allow anyone to influence elections. Negotiated by mutual investor Sean Parker, the deal gives people a way to turn out votes for candidates who support the Causes they’re passionate about.
Back in July, we caught wind of a stealthy startup called theAudience, which purported to be on a mission to help busy celebrities navigate the world of social media. Fittingly, the startup was a product of its own A-list roots, the result of a partnership between Napster, Plaxo and Airtime co-founder and founding president of Facebook, Sean Parker, and Hollywood superagent and William Morris co-CEO Ari Emanuel.
If you had to recruit the ideal team to help you navigate the intersection of technology, media, and celebrity, it probably wouldn’t look much different from the partnership behind theAudience. The stealthy social media company, which has flown under the radar until recently, counts Sean Parker, Ari Emanuel, and Oliver Luckett as its co-founders — just your average startup’s triumvirate of tech and entertainment influence.
Parker is best known as the co-founder of Napster, Plaxo, Causes, and most recently Airtime, as well as the founding president of Facebook and as an early investor in Spotify. Emanuel, on the other hand, is probably one of the best-known talent agents, currently serves as CEO of the William Morris Endeavor, is the brother of Chicago Mayor (and Obama’s former Chief of Staff) Rahm Emanuel — although he may be better known for being parodied as Ari Gold on Entourage. Oliver Luckett, theAudience’s acting CEO, may not have been immortalized on-screen by Jeremy Piven or Justin Timberlake, but he does have some digital media chops.
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Are you ready for your close-up? In early June, the dynamic, disrupting duo of Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning launched their new video chat and sharing network, called Airtime. As a matter of course, the founders built Airtime on top of Facebook, with a cool $33.5 million in funding to get the operation off the ground — and more.
Today, the startup released a polished new video that aims to demonstrate the power of the service and attract those elusive mainstream consumers. The entertaining spot naturally leverages a little star power to grab your attention, with cameos from the likes of MC Hammer, Kurt Russell, Ronnie Lott and Gary Vaynerchuk.
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Once upon a time, a humble click of a button could send a web service live. A couple of e-mails out or a post on a message board might be sufficient to draw the interest of a few early adopters.
No longer. Somehow, somewhere along the line, certain startup launches and demo days have become more like celebrity-studded movie premieres or gallery openings. We all go and gawk. We might stay. We might leave. But we’re all there for a show. And nowhere is the shift of technology industry from mainstream culture’s periphery to its center more evident than in the story of Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning — who are debuting their much-anticipated (and more family-friendly!) version of ChatRoulette today.
More than 15 years ago, Fanning and Parker were just teenagers trolling chat rooms. “We were both hackers,” Parker said in New York today. “We were interested in computer security. The goal was some sort of miscreant behavior…. We were basically cyber criminals.”
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Ready your arsenal of funny viral videos, Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning have just launched their video chat and sharing network Airtime. Built on Facebook with a stunning $33.5 million in funding, Airtime puts you onstage with a friend or matches you with an interesting stranger. There’s no application to install, it works straight from your browser. [Update: And today at the celebrity-filled Airtime launch party, Parker told me that iOS and Android apps are “coming very soon”.]
You could call it a more fun version of Skype, a one-on-one Google+ Hangouts with your Facebook graph, or the evolution of Chat Roulette. But what you’re going to call it is fun. Pull in a favorite YouTube video or select one you’ve already shared to Facebook and instantly you’re watching together. It feels simple, intimate, and casual — like you’re actually interacting in person.
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One minute into using Airtime I was laughing with someone I’d never met. That’s something special when despite all the asynchronous connection, the Internet threatens to make us feel lonely. On Airtime, you experience together thanks to real-time video chat and video sharing. You’re both the performer and the audience. When you look at your friend or a stranger you’ve been paired with, you get their body language, gestures, and attitude. Co-founders Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning tell me that on Airtime “there’s a depth of communication that doesn’t come through on something like Facebook. It’s much higher bandwidth.”
The Internet doesn’t have to isolate us. In fact, it’s a party, and Parker and Fanning aim to be the hosts. “Airtime relates people to each other, makes the connections as comfortable as possible. But without a facilitator [like Airtime], the fear of rejection is so powerful” Fanning adds. “People are way more entertaining than we give them credit for” Parker adds.
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Airtime looks to be finally ready for takeoff, as Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning’s stealth video startup just put up a blog stating “We look forward to saying hello on June 5th. Sign up to be first in line.” Airtime took a limited round of pre-registrations last month but is now letting people sign up for early beta access.
No one’s sure what exactly the startup does, though many believe it will help people meet each other through live streaming video.
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A few weeks ago at SXSW, Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning briefly mentioned — during a talk about another company they co-founded, Napster — that they were working on a new social video startup called Airtime. Now it looks like the company is gearing up for launch.
Airtime now has a website and a Facebook sign-up button for early access. And it is hiring.
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