shawn fanning

When Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning launched their latest startup this morning -- a social video chat service called Airtime -- you can bet that one person hoping for its success was Parker's longtime pal and onetime business partner, Mark Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg wasn't on hand at the celeb-filled launch in New York City -- though Zuck was spotted on Airtime later in the day -- and this wasn't a Facebook event by any means. But the pitch by Parker, who was Facebook's founding president and still owns a chunk of the newly public company, at times … Read more

Years from now, when our children are grown, we'll tell them we were all online when a single Web site changed the way we use the Internet. Unfortunately, Chatroulette stumbled after racking up more than a million users thanks to a certain part of the male anatomy, but Napster co-founders Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning have teamed up again for a video-chat pivot called Airtime.

Though it's not ready for deployment yet, Airtime is already getting support from celebrities like Jim Carrey, Alicia Keys, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus who can't wait to start a random conversation with a Facebook user online. The service is different from Chatroulette in that it actually protects the eyeballs of its users from "vulgar behavior, sexually suggestive behavior, violence, and animal cruelty". In other words, nobody associated with The 404 will receive an beta invite.… Read more

I have to admit, the new Airtime video chat service looks and feels cool. Certainly, that can be traced to its founders, Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning of Napster fame, among other things. Parker wasn't just the cool guy who lured Mark Zuckerberg to the West Coast in "The Social Network." His playlists on Spotify have also become one of my favorite places to find new music, and his spectacles are... well, I'm sure some people like them.

Given this duo's trend-setting credentials, it is with much trepidation that I express my utter bewilderment at how Sean/Shawn could think that anyone actually wants another video chat app trying to force random people to stare at each other and discuss the latest episode of "Mad Men." … Read more

NEW YORK--To launch his new start-up, Sean Parker should have spent less of his billions on celebrity guests and more of it on fixing his technology.

Parker and Shawn Fanning, his ol' partner from the Napster days, today unveiled Airtime, a Web video chat service designed to take up where Chatroulette left off. The launch event was a glitch-filled disaster -- or a marketing coup by Parker.

As he addressed a crowd of journalists and celebrities, Parker's attempt to demonstrate the service was foiled at every turn. Numerous attempts to connect with celebrities via the Web service failed. Not … Read more

NEW YORK -- After months of hype, Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning's latest venture, a video chat service called Airtime, launched today.

Airtime has been described as an evolved version of Chatroulette, a video service that randomly matched up people for chatting. The new venture matches people with common interests and social connections in video chat sessions.

It is the latest undertaking from the co-founders of Napster, which helped revolutionize how music was obtained over the Internet. While Napster ultimately faded away, it fundamentally changed how the music industry operated and viewed online content. Parker and Fanning are hoping … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Despite the success of Spotify and its competitors, music sharing still hasn't caught up to what Napster offered before being neutered by the courts, that service's founders, Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning, said today.

During a on-stage discussion at South by Southwest here, Parker and Fanning argued that though new technologies and licensing models finally allow music lovers to legally access and discover vast collections of songs online, even the best new services are still philosophically behind what Napster originally offered its users.

Parker, who appeared earlier this week alongside former U.S. vice president Al Gore … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--The offices of Path float 40 stories above the city in one of the upper floors of a residential tower just a block away from the waterfront, where the hallmarks of a young start-up--fridges of Red Bull, whiteboards awash in colorful scribbles, the glow of massive Mac desktop monitors--colonize what would normally be coveted apartment space for one of San Francisco's most financially fortunate. There's a balcony with sweeping views of the Bay Bridge and the waters underneath, where on this sunny fall afternoon a lone kayaker in a bright-orange craft flits around uncomfortably close to industrial … Read more

David Nelson, the 15-year-old co-founder of the free site Muziic, idealizes Napster creator Shawn Fanning. But that doesn't mean he's going to run his business the same way.

Muziic, which launched two weeks ago, is a music service that piggybacks on YouTube. Nelson's software rounds up YouTube's music videos and enables users to sort and add them to playlists as if they were MP3s. There's no messing around with YouTube's search engine, videos, or advertisements.

There's little about Muziic that compares to Napster, the peer-to-peer service that helped demolish the traditional music business … Read more

Rory Reid from CNET.co.uk joins us to talk all things tech. iPhones won't help you get laid in the U.S. or the U.K., Speed Racer looks like an abomination and Randall's stuffy nose ruins the show.

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