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Airtime: An Experiment in Shared Experiences

12. June, 2012 Internet, News, Tech 2,066 comments

You remember Chatroulette right? As the name implied it connected strangers from around the world together for webcam-based conversations. And with randomness came depravity and mental images I’ll never be able to scrub out of my brain.

Now what if you could actually chat with people who had your same interests, beliefs, likes, and ideas? A way to narrow down the randomness. What if you could also connect to people locally? Those in your town you might never meet but have common ground? A new Facebook app Airtime aims to do just that.

Airtime allows you to connect with friends old and new to share your interests. All the data is taken from your Facebook profile. It compiles all your likes, interests, schools, and even workplaces to create a list of keywords. These are used to match you up with people of like interests. Plus you may find you have things in common with old friends you never knew shared those interests. There’s a built in option to share YouTube videos and other web based content similar to Google+ meetups as well as a little button in the middle that allows you to give the other person points. Kind of like a karma or achievement system you could say.

I’ve gotten the chance to use the app for a couple of hours and it works surprisingly well. Admittedly you’ll still run into a lot guys who are looking to pick up chicks on the internet (something I still don’t understand). Though you will find those diamonds in the rough interested in carrying on a real dialogue. I had about an hour long conversation with an audio engineer from California. Great guy and we just sat and chatted about music, California, legalizing drugs, and everything in between. It was really cool.

It’s one of those apps that uses all that data Facebook collects and puts it to good use. The app is only a few days old so most of the users are pretty internet savvy. Now once this falls into the hands of Katy Perry and the Twilight fans we’ll need to start worrying. Just finding out I have something in common with a person who likes Twlight may crush my very universe. ^_^

You can check out the app for free by going to airtime.com and try it for yourself.

About author

Brian

Brian is the Managing Director here at Substance TV. He is the host of Substance TV, Game Grief, and co-host of Substance TV LIVE. A graphic designer by trade, his other love of 15 years is the bass guitar. Though he shares his love with his family as well. Luckily he has a wife who supports his video game game addiction, and his two amazing children. You can find him on Google + or via his Twitter @fortressfruit.

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