

Airtime Launches - kurtvarner
http://blog.airtime.com/post/24471686727/hello-world

======
psychotik
A blog post about a product launch with a sketch of the founders seems...
pompous. If there is an image, I would rather it be a screenshot of the
product or product related, or if you want people then one of the entire team.
This feels, from the start, about the founders more than the product.

~~~
hy3lxs
Here is our introductory video to give you a taste of the product:

<https://www.airtime.com/about>

We're still working on our team page, we've been a bit busy lately.

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look_lookatme
"You grant Airtime and its successors a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-
free, perpetual, sublicensable and transferable license to use, copy,
distribute, transmit, modify, prepare derivative works of, publicly display,
and publicly perform any such User Content, including without limitation, for
the purposes of commercially promoting the site."

I know this is pretty much boilerplate, but it's still a bit scary.

~~~
hy3lxs
This is boilerplate. The important part is having the freedom to keep the site
absolutely safe.

~~~
look_lookatme
What do you mean "safe"?

~~~
hy3lxs
When you are chatting in the "public" area anonymously with other users, we
take screenshots to monitor for abusive behavior. When you direct call someone
from your buddy list, that is a private conversation that is not monitored
(like a phone or Skype call).

Also, legal says we should cover our asses :)

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WiseWeasel
They just got $30M for _this_ , before signing up any users, and we're
supposed to believe the Good Times II are over?

I'm guessing the revenue model is completely based on displaying ads before
the connection is established, which makes them quite vulnerable to lulls in
the advertising market. That's not even getting into whether the
implementation is actually widely appealing enough to create a market for
those ads in the first place.

~~~
_pius
It'd be hard to have a more proven founding team than theirs.

~~~
WiseWeasel
That's what they said about Color.

~~~
_pius
True, which is precisely why Color was able to raise what it raised.

~~~
WiseWeasel
Thank you for reinforcing my point. I'm glad we agree.

Maybe the fact they got $30M instead of $40M indicates that the bubble is
popping... : P

~~~
_pius
If your point is that investors are willing to fully fund notable, proven
founding teams, I suppose we do agree.

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j_baker
_Today we’re excited to launch Airtime, the first live video network._

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is flatly inaccurate, isn't it? Justin.tv
has been doing live video for a while now.

~~~
james4k
There are a number of players doing live video, but I believe what they're
arguing more on is the networking aspect.

~~~
olog-hai
Tinychat[1] and especially vChatter[2] have served the same purpose on
Facebook for a while now. Exactly what is "first" about Airtime?

[1] <http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/03/tinychat-facebook/>

[2] [http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/21/vchatter-launches-a-pg-
rate...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/21/vchatter-launches-a-pg-rated-
version-of-chatroulette/)

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wattjustin
Chatroulette never became a commonly used service with its ease of anonymity.
With Airtime putting a users identity in to the mix, I still can't imagine
that people will hop on to video chat with strangers. I might be overly
cynical about this, but video chat seems like a difficult service to build a
user base around. Few people I know use Facebook's video service or even
FaceTime to chat with others they already know, let alone strangers who just
happen to like the same TV shows and bands that they do.

~~~
bproper
Yeah - I don't think many people will return to this again and again unless
they can build an interesting product around live events. I could see people
enjoying chat around sports or concerts.

Also, they haven't show anything beyond 1-1 conversation, which means Google+
and Skype have a significant advantage.

[http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/5/3065343/airtime-brings-
frie...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/5/3065343/airtime-brings-friends-
strangers-and-celebs-together-for-browser)

~~~
graupel
I just told a co-worker that AirTime was like 'Chatroulette with pants".

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Stampur
I would think they could sell it a bit better than "Create shared experiences
with people you know, and people you want to know." The point of a one liner
is to hook the reader with something unique and memorable--you could
transplant this phrase onto half the social startups out there.

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Dexec
Demo video: <https://www.airtime.com/about>

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Fedons
I'm not sure if it's a bug (I'm using Chrome 20 beta, on Lion), but as soon as
I've visited the Airtime landing page, my browser behaved automatically, as if
I pressed the "Launch Airtime button" and I've instantly received a "Welcome
to Airtime" email, even if I didn't accept their request of permissions.

I didn't have a look to the code, but I really hope this is just a bug and not
a malicious use of Facebook authentication...

~~~
hy3lxs
We would most certainly not do anything like that intentionally. The normal
user flow is the standard facebook app authentication dialog that clearly
lists all the permissions required for the site to work.

~~~
astartupaday1
The same thing happened to me. Chrome 19 on Lion. Just visited the site and
within seconds I had an email from you guys saying I had created an account,
even though I didn't click anything. You should fix this ASAP.

~~~
hy3lxs
Please send your facebook id to feedback@airtime.com to help us track this.
Thank you!

~~~
Fedons
I've just sent an email.

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calbear81
Besides the chatroulette meets facebook aspect, how is Airtime creating a live
network that's any different than what Ustream and Justin.tv has already done?

~~~
hy3lxs
Airtime is about extending your social graph one algorithmically-matched
individual at a time (one-to-one). Ustream and Justin.tv are about broadcast
channels (one-to-many) of which only a small percentage of the browsable
directory are active at any point in time.

~~~
calbear81
So it's chatroulette but with more intelligence using your FB social graph.
Like "you might want to talk to this person because they like cats and are
friends with your friend Jane." This seems to have good applicability in the
dating world.

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ryanmerket
This has been done before (Chatroulette off Facebook) and numerous other
Facebook platform apps. None of which have taken off. The core problem they
will face is that most people don't browse Facebook (much less a video
conferencing app) to meet new people...

~~~
mrchess
Well, Chatroulette validated the idea that people are naturally curious to
meet other random people, but the execution was poor.

To me Airtime seems like Chatroulette done right -- user authentication, tools
to interact with eachother, harder to post nudies... Now to see if it catches
on...

~~~
citricsquid
The entire value in Chatroulette is the anonymity.

You're absolutely right that Chatroulette is done wrong, the product sucks in
so many ways, but what Airtime have done is take one of the parts that
_doesn't_ suck and "fix" it.

~~~
hy3lxs
We're trying to have the best of both worlds.

You are not anonymous to Airtime -- so you can be held accountable for your
actions in the public areas of the site. However, you are always anonymous to
new people that you meet. We do not send your facebook id, name, or
geolocation to anyone you don't know until you mutually friend them.

~~~
citricsquid
oh, that's much better. You should make that clear somewhere on the site
before starting to chat[1], I signed up and was unaware that I remained
anonymous so decided not to go any further. I saw my details listed so made
the assumption everyone saw them.

[1] I see "Anonymous You are anonymous until you send an add request" but
that's after I started to search for people just now to check, I would never
have got that far if you hadn't explained about anonymity.

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Centigonal
I'm so sorry for being such a pedant, but I have to get it out somewhere:

"Whom." Not "that."

~~~
MartinCron
This is as good a place as any to get your "whom" out.

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csel
Let me guess, demographically, Airtime just like Chatroulette and all the
other dating sites, will have 99.5% of one gender and 0.5% of the other. This
will be another sausage fest (no pun intended)

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SoCool
I don't have facebook account and I don't want to signup for facebook. How do
I use airtime ?

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chamanbuga
The UI is horrendous. Especially if you attempt to use it without a video
camera.

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ghotli
Well it's a very pretty website. I really like the design.

~~~
hy3lxs
Brought to you by the genius and taste of Matt Cahill, our Lead Designer.
Illustrations by Shyama Golden.

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antidaily
No demo or screenshots?

~~~
samratjp
[http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/05/airtime-experience-
together...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/05/airtime-experience-together/)

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Toshio
I don't have Facebook. Does Airtime provide alternative ways to sign up, and
if not, why not?

~~~
lucaspiller
I usually bash these posts, because being a developer who has previously built
a number of apps using solely Facebook login I can understand why they don't
provide another means of signup. For the apps I have built people who don't
have a Facebook account aren't the intended target audience, and I believe it
could be easily argued Airtime fits this category. The amount Facebook gives
for free (friends, chat, payments, a verified email address, demographics) is
really hard to replicate via other means.

In this case though I think they ask for too much before giving anything or
even saying what it is about, firstly access to my Facebook account, then
requires enhanced permissions (which are meant to be optional, however the app
barfs if you don't allow them), then requires you to allow Flash to access my
webcam. It's more of a UX thing, but at least tell me what I am signing up to
and show me what I can get out of it by allowing access to all of this.

~~~
hy3lxs
Read your posts: allow us to prepopulate your video library with YouTube
videos that you've shared on your wall in the past.

XMPP permissions: we are deeply integrated with facebook chat. Your friends
online on Facebook can send and receive xmpp messages to you on Airtime.

Agreed that we could improve the messaging. Thanks for the feedback.

