Airtime
When the man who created Napster and helped launch Facebook talks, the tech industry listens.
And when Sean Parker and partner Shawn Fanning tease something new called Airtime, techies fall all over themselves to see what the next great innovation will be.
But then, at a fancy launch event featuring celebrities such as Alicia Keys and Snoop Dogg, Parker announces that it's ... basically, a random Web chat tool.
Cue the collective, "Huh?"
It didn't help that, at that fancy event, Airtime crashed over and over again. Or that folks had a hard time seeing how it would be different than Chatroulette (although Parker promised more users would actually be wearing pants).
In October, Parker admitted that Airtme, launched with more than $33 million in backing, had just 10,000 active users. (That's $3,300 spent per user, if you're scoring along at home.)
"Running a startup is like eating glass," he said at the All Things D conference. "You just start to like the taste of your own blood."
Ouch.