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Airtime, the long awaited startup led by Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning, is three months old. Three months are nothing for a startup and they probably don’t mean anything in terms of statistics, usage and interactions. However, after three months we have new data thanks to App Data. Before the launch we believed they could be the next big thing, or maybe the next big project.
For the first time ever, Airtime, wanted to let people who didn’t know themselves meet through its service. This aim was firstly embraced by Chatroulette, which soon became the gather point for people who wanted some porn. On the other hand Airtime wanted to make the same service in a cleaner way, with the purpose to block any kind of sexual harassment.
The idea behind this project was very noble and we really appreciated that, but the statistics that are out after just three months are awful. The interaction that occurs on the site is very low and the people who use it every day are under one thousand. In this case we can easily see how the Airtime model has been overwhelmed by the Chatroulette one.
Although the two services did the same things, the former didn’t want your facebook profile and your interests. On the other hand the latter wanted you to connect through Facebook in order to find the people who fitted your interests. At the beginning it seemed to be a good idea and another way to use the open graph. However this was probably the worst intuition. People don’t like to share their identity with strangers and they also don’t like to communicate with people, who they don’t know, by video chatting.
As the Lean Startup has taught us, there is plenty of time. The stats that we see today make a point, but they haven’t screwed the entire project yet. In the last year, the Airtime team has learned a lot from this sector and it will probably be able to use that knowledge in this precise field. Every user they lose doesn’t mean a failure, but an improvement.
We don’t think it is time to pivot, we believe that Airtime has still to play its role in the startup community, but it has to do it very careful. Further they should improve their marketing strategy in order to let people know the product, which doesn’t exist for many of us. If we have the same results in the next months, they should probably consider pivoting in order to look for something stronger and more reliable in the same niche.
