Napster founders Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning battled agonizing technical difficulties during the launch of their new live social video platform, Airtime — with celebrity guests improvising through the glitches.
After starting an hour late at Milk Studios, Jimmy Fallon kicked things off with a Q&A with Parker and Fanning before Olivia Munn, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Ed Helms, Jim Carrey and an off-site Alicia Keys and Snoop Dogg, wearing sunglasses and smoking, attempted to join in via video on Airtime.
First, Munn’s video feed froze. Then, after two failed attempts to patch Snoop through on video, the other stars began demonstrating how the site works, each of them battling errors.
“Community” star Joel McHale weathered the brunt of the breakdowns, fighting feedback before his microphone died. McHale improvised for five minutes to a room full of tech journalists as the demo failed, joking, “How many of you are blogging how smoothly this is going right now? . . . Sean Parker is a legend. They will erect statues to him very soon. I just love that he has to go to the back of the computer and pull out wires.”
McHale added, “Right now, what this is called is disaster,” and to Parker, “Whose ass are you going to fire?” Parker responded, “We’re gonna restart the computer and blame it on someone who doesn’t work for Airtime, like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook . . . ”
When things were finally running. Louis-Dreyfus was patched through, saying, “What time is it? It’s like three in the morning.” Carrey, appearing later, quipped, “Where do I download the free music?”
Parker admitted he was relieved he had the celebs’ wit to fall back on. “Thank God you guys are funny, because we’re screwed,” he said, adding, “We really have no business being in the technology business right now.”
An Airtime rep (blaming it on someone who doesn’t work for Airtime) last night explained, “The glitches . . . were generated by a custom- built intranet produced specifically for the event: not Airtime. ”