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Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning’s Airtime Will Fail Quickly

By On June 5, 2012 · 12 Comments
seanshawn Sean Parker and Shawn Fannings Airtime Will Fail Quickly

Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning Airtime Ad Parody

I discovered today that Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning have founded a new startup called Airtime which ironically is a social video service similiar to that of ChatRoulette only sans private parts and exclusive to those who have a Facebook account. But the thing that is really dubious in my opinion is their decision to use Adobe Flash to power their platform but hey maybe they didn’t get the memo that Flash is so yesterday?

I find it hard to believe though that any startup that uses flash as a core technology in their offering is going to stay afloat for long since it would prevent mobile devices from using the service which is a major necessity for the success of most tech startups that is offering a a mobile version of their product.

By the way whats up with the Sasquatch rocking out on a banjo on their website? Just kind of weird.

 

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  • tom_jones

    eh, i don’t get it.. what *should* they use instead? webrtc? that doesn’t work in any shipping browser, let alone a mobile one..
     
    also, they can probably just create mobile apps for ios and android, and reach over 95% of both desktops and smartphone users, both today, and for the foreseeable future..
     
    i hate flash as much as the next guy, but startups must be pragmatic..

    • http://www.benjaminkerensa.com/ bkerensa

       @tom_jones HTML5?

      • simonster

         @bkerensa WebRTC is the part of HTML5 that is supposed to allow the browser to interact with the webcam. As tom_jones notes, it’s not done yet.

      • http://Esdot.ca/ Esdot

        @bkerensa Haha html5 is not the same as ‘Kalamazoo’ it’s not a magic word that solves everything! This stuff doesn’t work without flash… Deal with it.

  • ChicoHu

    Completely Wrong. Sites using flash player are also able to create mobile apps that can also connect with the site. It’s called Adobe AIR for mobile.
     
    at the end of the day, a plugin has to be used for video chat to work on the web, whether its flash or the plugin google uses, its a plugin, and flash is just more convenient as everybody has it. Even if no one had it, i’d still use it and get people to download it to use my service (like google does with its plugin).
     
    A little un-educated from your side  :-) 

  • http://michaelhendrickx.com/ Mike

    I’m not sure if it’s really the technology, rather – is there a need to videochat (ewww) with semi random people.  It actually does seem like chatroulette minus the randomness (and thus, minus the porn initially)

  • straatkat

    One: Flash is a mature platform with great tools and people are well trained on it
    Two: It is a technology that has feature parity across a lot of platforms
    Three: It is build into Chrome and soon IE10, which means that the mayority of webbrowsers will work with no intervention from the user.
    Four: HTML5 has a long way to go in browser support and features and API’s
     
    Lastly, as a startup, wanting to build things fast and target as many platforms as possible, flash is still the way to go, right now, with out the pain to code for 4 different browsers, supporting sortoff the same stuff in various shape of progress.

  • Rand McRanderson

    Because a Sasquatch rocking a banjo makes a lot less sense than a company with a dinosaur logo making a product with a fox wrapped around the planet. And there are also insects in there some where.

    • Benjamin Kerensa

      Dinosaurs are awesome and so are foxes. :P

  • Rand McRanderson

    Because a Sasquatch rocking a banjo makes a lot less sense than a company with a dinosaur logo making a product with a fox wrapped around the planet. And there are also insects in there some where.

  • sadface

    Lol, bashing Airtime for using Flash to do something that can’t be done without a plugin anyway (HTML5 audio/video capture isn’t ready at all). Quality blog.

    • http://benjaminkerensa.com/ Benjamin Kerensa

      Yep correct and one of their developers said Flash is just a temporary technology they will use. Notably Flash will become EOL on many platforms in the coming months.