![Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning talk about the launch of their new startup, Airtime [video]](https://img-cdn.tnwcdn.com/image?fit=1280%2C720&url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn0.tnwcdn.com%2Fwp-content%2Fblogs.dir%2F1%2Ffiles%2F2012%2F06%2FScreen-Shot-2012-06-05-at-1.19.46-PM1.png&signature=5e18ab2b6dde89d8360b1a805d2b7769)
Story by
Harrison Weber
Harrison Weber is TNW's Features Editor in NYC. Part writer, part designer. Stay in touch: Twitter @harrisonweber, Google+ and Email. Harrison Weber is TNW's Features Editor in NYC. Part writer, part designer. Stay in touch: Twitter @harrisonweber, Google+ and Email.
Following Airtime’s excessively star-studded launch in NYC, Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning have released a video discussing their history and how a chance meeting online in IRC brought the two together over 14 years ago. The chance connection is being sold as the catalyst for Airtime entirely, as the company’s overreaching goal is to create shared experiences with people you know and don’t know.
Or, in layman’s terms, Airtime is like chat roulette without the penises.
As you can see in the interview below, Parker talks about the Web’s original ability to connect random people together in a way that was never thought possible — Where physical connections and restraints were no longer limiting. Parker feels that this early excitement has been lost through the likes of Facebook, and hopes that Airtime will bring those connections back.
The real question is, cute story aside, will Airtime bring this sort of engagement back to the Web?
➤ Airtime
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