10 Big Tech Flops Of 2012


 # 7 Sean Parker’s Airtime

Sean Parker’s Airtime was an insanely hyped startup, which turned out to be a whole lot of nothing. Airtime was this founder’s response to ‘Chatroulette’, a place to meet new people through webcam, text chat and mic. It was supposed to revolutionize communication through Facebook.

This did not happen because Airtime suffered from stagnant user base despite its $33 million in funding also with a somewhat infamous June opening press conference with stars such as Jim Carrey and Alicia Keys and the blessing of cool comics Jimmy Fallon and Julia Louis Dreyfus.  Parker later added that the site was getting only 10,000 active users per day. However, he maintained that the product would transform how we communicate.

# 6 Apple Maps

Steve Jobs might have built the mighty Apple which may be a juggernaut. But the mighty company can also make mistake. Apple Maps was proved to be a complete disaster that CEO Tim Cook had to apologize for. He said that Apple strived to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers and with the launch of the new Maps, they fell short on doing this commitment. He also added that they were extremely sorry for the frustration this had caused to the customers and were doing everything to make Maps better.

With Google taking years to assemble and fine tune its product, Apple could not make it anyway with its cleverness and hubris. Fancy new features such as 3D imagery and spoken turn-by—turn couldn’t save this product riddled with errors.