Rabbit makes it brain-dead easy to use video chat on a web browser

Rabbit is taking another shot at creating super-easy video chat today. The San Francisco company is unveiling its browser-based video chat and content-sharing application so that you can connect with your friends more easily. All you have to do is share a web link.

You can use Rabbit to do things like watch a shared video in a private chat room with up to 10 friends at the same time. The idea is to let people share content and experiences over the Internet in the same way they would if they were together in person. You can share videos, games, and documents just by sharing a link with someone.

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“The idea is to make it as frictionless as possible to join a chat session,” Michael Temkin, chief executive of Rabbit, told VentureBeat in an interview. “We looked at what we needed to do to make this a mass market experience. There’s no plug-in or login required.”

The app works with the Google Chrome and Opera web browsers. Support for Safari, Internet Explorer, and Firefox is coming. Watching a movie with friends is like sitting on a couch in a group. Rabbit can be accessed via computers with a web camera and a microphone.

Rabbit was founded in 2012, and it previously released its application on the Mac. People used the app to connect with their friends and family in a group that averaged about four people. On average, they talked for 77 minutes.

But it found that there were too many barriers of entry for the plug-in based solution. Now the effort involved is trivial. In the past, you had to sign up using Facebook. Now you don’t.

The new tech uses the web real-time communications applications programming interface. It is a peer-to-peer protocol with new additions from Rabbit.

“Everything is a lot easier to use and figure out,” Temkin said.

One user said he and his girlfriend were separated by an ocean and used Rabbit to watch movies together. Temkin said, “He said, ‘Thanks for saving my relationship.'”

The company is privately held and backed by investors including Google Ventures, CrunchFund, and Michael Birch. Rabbit has 12 employees.

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“We’re excited that people will use it for things we have not yet imagined,” Temkin said. “It’s a very exciting time for us.”