| Hi all, after glancing at the comments it seems that a few people are confused about Neko and what its purpose is. Neko is a self-hosted shared browser, which was built in response to a product called Rabb.it shutting down. Rabb.it had ~4 million MAUs and raised a series B before shutting down due to investors pulling out last-minute during their series C fundraising. Rabb.it was focused on watch parties. There are a few reasons why shared browsing is more appealing than video sync and screenshare for this use case: 1. Screenshare requires good uplink—some people only have good download speeds 2. Some people are uncomfortable with sharing their screen, nobody likes being judged for their bookmark choices 3. Nobody acts as a "host", control can be passed around to anyone and people can leave whenever they want In other words, you get the content variety of screenshare, but with the convenience of video sync. And now for a shameless plug :) Hyperbeam (formally Tutturu.tv) is a site I built in 2019 for my capstone project at the University of Waterloo. I built it because I wanted an easier way to watch anime with my friends, and decided to build something similar to Rabb.it. It's hosted and free! https://hyperbeam.com |
Outside of the points that Scotty made, not everyone has access to a computer, or don't have good enough ones to handle streaming as smoothly. In fact, there are multiple use-cases for this technology, considering it can work as a "cloud browser", either storing information or being completely disposable (as in, the whole browser activity/session/data gets destroyed after usage or on-demand). That said, for what we're used to, a lot of people use it for watch parties so they can share "a bit of the Internet" between friends, family, and even completely strangers!
And I say "we're" because I work on a similar, open-source, "Rabb.it alternative" (or VM-sharing platform, however you prefer to call it): https://cryb.app
That said, that requires self-hosting, so feel free to check out Hyperbeam if fiddling up with configuring Node.js applications and Docker apps is not your thing! But if you wanna give yourself an adventure for this use-case, go ahead :)