Companies have had a hard time convincing users to embrace persistent video-chatting — leaving a v-chat window open all the time as you might with an instant messenger — but the Mac-only Rabbit application may be able to do just that.
The company received $3.3 million in new investments from places such as Google Venture, CrunchFund and Bebo founder Michael Birch, and will use the money to work on the engineering behind Rabbit.
While its creators originally intended to make Rabbit a way for people to hang out and meet each other in publicly-created virtual rooms, they found that the early adopters, who signed up for the closed beta, have mainly used private rooms, TechCrunch reports, taking advantage of the video-sharing function to watch movies and Youtube videos with their friends.
Feedback has been largely positive, and the Rabbit team has added a private messaging feature to appeal to users who prefer closed conversations with friends over meeting people in public rooms.
In a way, it does achieve the goal of making online browsing a "social experience," especially considering its demographic seems to be mainly teenagers. Kids born in the '80s and '90s had to invite friends over to watch a DVD (or VCR), but Rabbit can cut out the transportation issue completely — you don't have to go to someone's house or, if hosting, bring out the popcorn, if everyone is at home.
Rabbit's other services feature music and file-sharing, allowing students or co-workers to do joint projects and jam out to the same tunes. Gregory Fischbach, founder of Acclaim Entertainment, which was responsible for games such as Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam, among others, told TechCrunch that Rabbit is "batter than rock and roll."
Users are being let in on a first-come first-serve basis for now — the app can run on Mac OS versions 10.7 or higher, and people can sign up at facebook.com/LetsRabbit. A PC version may become available once the application has been refined and finalized for Mac.
