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Comment by keithwhor | Hacker News Reader

I think this is brilliant. Even the press details seem perfectly crafted, with one article referencing Evan's "supermodel girlfriend."

Snapchat can win here based on brand alone. The hardware features are a plus, but they're going to sell a lifestyle. Think GoPro + Versace. Commenters here are caught up in the tech. It's not the tech. Get a few celebrities in these, people will buy them and barely use the recording features. They're cheaper than Ray-Bans and I bet you and half of your friends own a pair of those.

Snapchat can assemble an AR powerhouse from the ground up with brand goodwill. Evan and his team have figured out the best market strategy to do so. Google is not "cool" and could never attempt to pull this off.

I have tremendous respect for Evan Spiegel right now. Bold move. Amazingly positioned. I wish them the best of luck. Dare I say, it has the scent of Jobs to it - the vision, the risk ("we make sunglasses now!") and definitely the "cool-factor." Don't misinterpret - this isn't the iPhone, not yet anyway, but I think they're on to something very big.

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This product is about branding. But not about SnapChat's branding. And at $129/pop, certainly not about Versace's either. Branding is about putting the innate and immutable truth about the product in the forefront.

What is the immutable truth about Spectacles? To get there, we will take my obligatory tour of the immutable truth about "Glass". Glass started out as evil empire all the way. Visually, Glass looks the headgear the Cardassian Commanders wore while fighting side-by-side with other races in The Dominion. Got that? The Evilest of Evil Empires. Add to that, the subtle design aspects that tried to make Glass as invisible as possible to passersby. Though noticeable to the trained eye, Glass was certainly not prominent in the visual hierarchy of the average person. And if you were in the room with someone wearing Glass, you never knew if they were recording you. Glass is covert and voyeuristic, and that's what people hated about Glass.

So, back to what the "Spectacles" brand is. It's basis is in fun. A serious design effort to make them look fashionable. Perhaps not everyone's taste, but you can tell they didn't use a stock frame out of the catalog of a Chinese sunglass factory. Combine the shape with some goofy (or "ironic" in hipster parlance) color/pattern options, Spectacles come off as an every day stylish person's accessory. Add to that, the LEDs around the camera light up when recording, so you know when the wearer has chosen to record. They are right out in the open with their intent, not slithering around in the shadows like some Glasshole.

He is like Jobs in the sense that he didn't invent Snapchat and he didn't code it. Maybe he articulated the philosophy of it being an anti-Kodak moment app.

The article quotes someone saying Evan's the "best product visionary" they had ever met. Give a smart kid a hot app, millions in funding and thus more smart minds, and great things can happen. But let's not overly romanticize it.

I am impressed by Snapchat's evolution, Stories etc but all that is somewhat obvious iterations on someone else's initial idea.

Snapchat is fun and sexy for a variety of reasons, none of which correlate well with people wearing clunky glasses. Spectacles aren't cool and won't be. It's a head-mounted camera. It needs to be more sleek, more expensive, and have some novel features to be considered a status symbol.

Spidey thought
Hey Amy - just a couple of rando thoughts from 35,000 LAX-JFK:
- A rising trend we see with Millennials are the really extreme forms of experiential exercise like Tough Mudder (a sort of filthy triathalon), the Color Run and even things like Hot Power Yoga, veganism etc. Millennials will often post “N.B.D.” on their social media after doing it , as in No Big Deal, also known as the “humble brag”.....wondering if Spidey could get into that in some way....he’s super athletic, bendy, strong, intense....and it’s all NBD to him, of course.
- EDM (electronic dance music) is the defining music for Millennials. Wondering if there’s an EDM angle somewhere with Spidey? His movements are beautiful, would be awesome with a killer DJ behind it

- Snapchat just launched a “story” functionality, which is sort of “day in the life of me” told in a series of snapchats that expire after 24 hours. It has a very VIP quality about it, since invitation only. Getting invited into Spidey’s Snapchat circle would be huge, and very buzzworthy and cool.

http://www.avclub.com/article/spider-man-should-be-snapchatt...

You're essentially saying that if Evan Spiegel had released Google Glass, it would have been successful because Evan is cool and Google is not. First, Evan isn't that cool - he tried to cut out and leave penniless his frat brother that actually came up with the idea for Snapchat [1]. While that may be a Jobs or Zuckerberg-type move, it certainly doesn't make him cool.

Second, Glass failed largely because of the invasive techno-snob feel to it - something that Spectacles has not overcome. It's one thing to have an iPhone in your pocket; it's quite another to shove your camera and microphone enabled face computer into the lives of literally everyone you interact with.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/snapchat-lawsuit-video-deposi...

Glass could have taken the GoPro market, except GoPro did it better.

These are positioned more for celebrity events, where everyone understands they could be on camera. The film crew are celebrities too now, or celebrities start filming their interactions, so a big bright pair of these tells everyone 'hey I'm filming!' like a big camera would.

At private parties, I imagine it's largely the same thing, except that everyone there can only post onto Snapchat where it's lost to the sands of time.

The overtness and ephemeralness fixes both of the problems people had with 'glassholes'

One step closer to a Black Mirror episode :)

Exactly my train of thought. Gets me thinking of the actual advantages of such a thing, is it really necessary?

These are shitty glasses that are already being billed as <$150.

This is not even remotely "Versace" - it can't possibly be.

Imagine pimply-faced teen nerds wearing these.

They will not even attempt to go for a "luxury" / "high-end" feel. Snapchat is not even remotely Apple.

Relax for a moment and come out of your fantasy.

> this isn't the iPhone, not yet anyway

Remind me to read this in a year. Or a week.

No wireless. Less space than a Google Glass. Lame.

I can't tell whether your comment is satire or serious, I should quit the internet today ;)

Also, that 'thing' looks even more ridiculous then Google Glass.

Dead serious. "Cool" is all this product needs to be successful. People buy sunglasses. People like Snapchat. At $129 this is a no-brainer. Don't underestimate the power of social signaling.

> Don't underestimate the power of social signaling.

You mean the social signaling that is going to brand these users as "glassholes" as well?

>At $129 this is a no-brainer.

Please step out of your tech bubble. Most snapchat users are teenagers or college-age persons who absolutely do not have $129 to drop on a pair of novelty sunglasses.

Kanye did one of his popup stores near my house recently. Line of teenagers two blocks long waiting to buy $400 T-shirts. If it's cool, they'll find the $.

Kanye is cool and his clothes have massive resale value. Clunky nerd gadgets spotlighted in the WSJ have neither.

snapchat is cool. whether these glasses will be cool...who knows, but they certainly have a good shot at it.

These are the same teenagers/college-age persons who own $600+ iPhones.

Most phones are subsidized by wireless contracts.

Cell phones aren't subsidized, they are just financed over 2 years (with the payment often hidden in your monthly cell phone bill). If the price of the glasses is a problem (I doubt it is), they could be financed the same way "Just give us $11/month for a year and you can have them today!"

That's becoming more common but is not universal yet. Phones often still are subsidized, even when the buyer is still paying something for the phone.

The phone-sized early termination fees put the lie to it being any sort of subsidy.

(for "subsidy" to be a reasonable description of the flow of funds, the phone company would probably have to be losing money on the most expensive phones; of course they aren't. They provide the phone up front with a minimal payment, but they have structured the monthly fees to more than cover their costs for doing this.)

Except they charge me the same rate if I already have my device as the person in the long-term contract, just without the early termination fee. If they have structured the locked-in person's contract to cover hardware costs then they have structured mine for that as well, despite the fact that I didn't get hardware from them. Therefore, I am paying part of the hardware costs for the people who buy phones from the provider; i.e. I am subsidizing them.

Furthermore, early termination fees are constant for all contracts. The person who got the $150 phone has the same termination fee as the person who got the $600 phone. Thus again, someone is subsidizing someone else.

I'm pretty sure that people using paid for hardware are just more profitable than people that are still paying for hardware. But they make income on all the people.

And the fees aren't necessarily the same for cheaper phones:

https://www.verizonwireless.com/landingpages/return-policy/

Cheaper than a pair of raybans, which are fairly ubiquitous. If they are successful, the price will drop too. If the hardware is minimal, and people like the design, why not buy these instead of whatever other sunglasses they were going to buy and get a fun toy as well?

Raybans actually look nice and maintain their value. These look like they were designed by a committee that googled "cool millennial"

All the young 20 something year olds that I know are still not dropping $120 on sun glasses unless they are young college graduated professionals. Most are not. And I'm a 28 year old professional that wears $10 knock offs.

I'm with you on the idea that "cool" and "lifestyle" sell, especially when they're backed by celebs. That said, Snapchat isn't a lifestyle product, it's an app. Moving from pocket to face is a monumental transition with monumental challenges, but certainly one worth trying. My money says the glasses never become mass adopted but maybe Snapchat - sorry, Snap - learns a few things along the way that set it up for success with Hardware Product #2.

And hardware product #2 could be an interface with even less friction.

Remember Memoto? — The lifelogging camera that clips on your shirt; it looks like they're called Narrative now [0].

If Snapchat owns the camera hardware they have total control over analytics. They could become the platform for sharing daily moments. At some point, that's what Facebook was, except there was always an app layer in-between.

[0]: http://getnarrative.com

The trendy end of fashion always looks ridiculous after it falls out of style. Snapchat still has the trendiness that Google and Facebook lost long ago. If you think otherwise, find a few 20 year olds (outside of tech) and ask them what they think of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and Snapchat.

Facebook probably can still use Instagram's brand, so that is an edge over Google. If they can do it soon enough while resisting branding the hardware as "Facebook" is another matter. That also means they probably have to already be close to releasing a finished product.

The larger question to me is who will have the stamina to thrive in the post-smartphone era? Snapchat may be able to break to ice and get a lot of people to wear something weird and clunky. By generation two or three, what happens if Apple, Magic Leap, or someone else is able to produce a more refined & seamless wearable? To "win" Snapchat will have to produce an incredibly robust AR headset that no one thinks twice about wearing all day long.

Other commenters are correct, the article reads like a shameless press release.

Reads like a full page ad by the WSJ. Uncool on multiple levels.

The price is quite right. The design remains to be tested in real environments with real people. Let's not forget the reactions to Google Glass. Framing (pun intended) of the intended use will be everything

No, they look ridiculous. If anyone walked up to me wearing those I'd have to really restrain myself from ripping them off their face and stepping on them. At the very least they'd get a laugh.

That's pretty much the intention, they're only supposed to be worn at special events so it's super overt that you could be filming

It doesn't look ridiculous to the audience its catered to. Thick frames are in style & its symmetrical. A typical snapchat user would not be concerned by most of the things mentioned on this thread, except that these glasses fit a certain lifestyle these users are aspiring to. I.e what you could be doing with these glasses on you as opposed to anything to do with the glasses themselves.

I guess the only way to find whos right is to wait a few months to see what its uptake is like

As part of the audience it's catered to, it absolutely looks ridiculous. The question is, is it useful/interesting/popular/trendy enough to warrant that ridiculousness? It'll depend on how they market it.

My opinion is that Snapchat is pretty good already, so why would I need this? Hence my analysis is that it would be difficult for Snap to market this product effectively without cannibalizing their existing product, so it's interesting to see whether they will make the queen's gambit.

Does the typical snapchat user hang out on HN? When I think of snapchats core audience I think 18 year olds who are "super social" and care a lot about fashion and "new stuff".

Not saying it can't overlap, but still.

Yes. To the average person I know who looks at HN, their first reaction is "EW what's wrong with this webpage, it's gross!" this even includes some devs I've met...

Their audience still has tons of 20-somethings [0], and a lot of topics on HN are catered toward startups, which are (like it or not) biased toward 20- and 30-somethings.

[0]: http://www.recode.net/2015/3/26/11560724/heres-the-chart-tha...

Yeah but "20-something" is really not a group, I know LOADS of 20-something people. Many of them use snapchat but none of them use HN.

does ironic wearing in the hipster mode work in this case?

Yeah, my guess is it will be similar to the Apple Watch. Somewhat popular for a little while with people working in tech or tech-media, but completely non-existent in the 'real world'.

At Apple's last event they said they were the number 2 watchmaker by revenue. They can't have gotten there by only selling to techies.

Anecdotally, I see tons of Apple Watches around Manhattan.

I hardly know any people who still have a traditional watch, yet alone a smart watch, so #2 watchmaker doesn't mean much to me ;) I haven't seen many Apple Watches yet in the wild (may be 2 or 3) might have to do with the fact that I'm from Germany (Berlin). A lot of iPhones here though. I know, anecdotal evidence etc...

You are underestimating the popularity of the Apple Watch. Sure, it's nowhere near as ubiquitous as the iPhone, but it's by no means limited to tech circles. Part of the problem is that many people that might be ineterested in one were not able to justify the price. With the new price drop on the series 1 I suspect the market share will inrease significantly. Others meanwhile were waiting for the second generation because they didn't want to be on the bleeding edge. The series 2 is sold out everywhere and has a 3-5 week lead time, about the same as the iPhone.

The Spectables are a godsend for parents with little children and pet owners, as clearly demonstrated in the leaked promo video. Absolutely brilliant. I can't wait to see the endless stream of babies, toddlers, cats and dogs on Snap, Face or Twit. And cakes, don't forget the cakes! It will be like heaven, but Heaven 2.0! Snap will IPO so hard.

"Dare I say, it has the scent of Jobs to it" he dared!

Yeah, there are an incredible number of positive posts in this thread. All this support for Spy Kids sunglasses is very... surprising.

Very refreshing compared to the usual negativity on here if you ask me.

Take a long, deep breath. Then take a few steps backwards, so you can take the scene in with a slightly broader perspective. Now hark back to how many times someone has been breathlessly been compared to Steve Jobs and how many times the person who has made that comparison has ended up looking silly. Let's give Evan a few years before we start fanboying him.

LMAO right? These are literally shitty-looking sunglasses with a ten second loop camera on them that's only usable with Snapchat. These will be handed out at fancy NYC/LA/SF parties where people will play with them for a minute or so before putting them back down and going on their phones.

Try to understand the essence of the problem and the whole thing makes perfect sense.

Problem: many spontaneous moments are missed because the phone is not immediately accessible. The phone is in the pocket and it takes seconds to dig out the phone and switch to the camera app, and by that time I missed the moment.

Solution: put a camera at line of sight. Make it super simple to capture.

When you phrase it as a camera you mount to your head, it sounds super creepy. The sunglass is a natural vehicle for the camera since most people have sunglasses and wear them when it is sunny outside. It allows for validation testing of the idea, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a prescription version if the demand is there.

> Solution: put a camera at line of sight. Make it super simple to capture.

But these are sunglasses which are unlikely to be worn much indoors. So one might still have to fumble in a bag for the glasses, don them to put the camera in line of sight and then take a snap.

What really irks me is the overloading of the term 'spectacles'. These are absolutely not spectacles as commonly understood: "lenses to help a person's sight". But henceforth, any time anyone wants to search for spectacles they'll have to include terms to exclude Snapchat's gadget.

Surely they could have saved some of the money they spent on buying spectacles.com and invented a unique name. Snapticles? ( Google lists four hits for that word right now ).

A Spectacle is also a performance or something worth watching. One could say many moments in our lives are spectacles that few people see, and recording those would help us share.

It's really not a bad name.

"lenses to help a person's sight"

But, if the lenses people see the world through is Snapchat then this makes perfect sense.

Why not just enjoy the spontaneous moment rather than fiddling with a phone or press a button on the glasses. The odds of looking back through all your archived 10 second video and reliving the spontaneous moment is pretty nill.

Because thats not how narcissism works. Social media is everyone's highlight reel; enjoying the moment to yourself doesn't create envy or FOMO in your social circles.

Hey, as a glass owner, maybe this will at least give privacy advocates something else to yell at for a change...

Well, it's especially difficult when the video self-destructs within 24 hours.

Problem: many spontaneous moments are missed because people feel compelled to "share" them.

Solution: enjoy the spontaneous moment.

Is keithwhor's comment not sarcastic? Read it again.

Ever use the first iPhone? It could barely make PHONE calls. It was a terrible phone.

Are you seriously comparing a pair of shitty-looking sunglasses to the iPhone?

These are sunglasses that take a ten second video that is tied to Snapchat. They cost 130 bucks and immediately signal that you are a techie douchebag because that's what people still associate video-taking glasses with. It is literally a novelty toy that is using a WSJ article (native content advertising) to make it seem like a revolutionary technology / something cool. No one is going to buy these.

The article says over and over again it's a toy.

Young people, 14-25 are going to buy these and make them cool. Not the 35 year old engineers who bought Google Glass.

Google has never made something cool. Snapchat was cool out of the gate.

>Google has never made something cool.

Gmail was pretty revolutionary when it came out, and nearly everyone in that 14-25 age group uses Chrome.

That's not the same as being cool.

Yes, Chrome is extremely popular among that age group, but many popular things aren't cool. For example, the Big Bang Theory is something very popular but even the fans wouldn't say it's cool.

In fact many things are cool in part because they are not overly popular, and often decrease in coolness as they become popular.

Gmail and Chrome were indeed innovative once, and perhaps you could argue they were cool back then, but today they are just a commodity - people (especially in that age group) just take them for granted, "it's what we use." They aren't cool.

Am I allowed to puke now?

The article also includes fluff about how the glasses captured the experience hiking like no other and assorted hype.

>Young people, 14-25 are going to buy these and make them cool.

No, they are not. These are going to come to nothing, maybe some more fluff pieces. If I'm wrong, be sure to leave a comment here in the future.

I spoke to a 25 year old girl this morning that is not a techie, but likes Snapchat, and she had already heard of the glasses and wanted a pair. Sample size of one, but I'm pretty confident that non-techies will buy them.

The question is whether it can grow to anything bigger than instant film Polaroids, which people also buy and enjoy using at parties, etc.

I think the glasses are stupid, but then again, I thought the whole idea behind snapchat was stupid to begin with, yet here we are.

Obviously my finger is not on the pulse of today's youth. I don't think the kids today will be too inclined to shell out $130 for these gimmicky things, but my judgement on such matters is demonstrably terrible.

Not a kid, but I absolutely love the idea of a camera at eye level that can capture what I'm seeing. Many times I've missed random animal sightings or funny moments because I didn't have a camera at the ready (and sometimes it takes a while to dig out the phone).

I thought about what could go right. It's going to be huge.

It'll be memeable instagram for commodity VR. 10 second FPV clips will become the next creative currency- the new 140 characters. It's an untrodden and instantly democratized new medium, but could only get the needed network effect if it's backed by someone with Snapchat's clout.

By the time useful AR comes to market, Snap will have all the best creative content.

Same problem as Google glasses though, people dont like having a camera pointing at them when they talk to you.

The ten second limit could be helpful for social acceptance, plus these look more like Raybans and not the gargoyle glasses that Google Glass embodied.

If you check the website, you'll see they have lights built around the lens to "show friends your snapping." I imagine this was specifically built to assuage that concern.

Everything you just said are things people said about every iteration in the tablet market. Including the iteration to the iphone.

I'm not personally enamored with these glasses either, but let's be fair. Plenty of folks considered the iphone an expensive tool for douchebags at its release. This is true of nearly all new personal computing products and is not a distinguishing characteristic.

I was comparing the fact that Apple tossed out an unfinished, first iteration of a product that eventually became polished tech.

I'm pointing out that the limitations on these glasses are along the same path.

Seems like a bunch of people didn't catch my point, I'll try and be more clear in the future.

What's with the hate? You realize there's a possibility you will stand corrected?

OH NO i'll be wrong on the internet

> Let's give Evan a few years before we start fanboying him.

Apart from the norm that fanboying is bad, why? Isn't his resume pretty good already?

Apart from that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

Not sure how it's brilliant. Secondly, it still suffers from that fact that literally everyone is creeped out by a rando staring at them with two cameras. At least a phone is halfway obvious when in use.

Maybe the main market will eventually be little kids. This is obviously a toy after all, and who would ever be creeped out when ot is used in that context.

I'm guessing you haven't been the obvious standout (in terms of being different, not amazing) in a crowd.

I live in Thailand and having occasional locals who literally eye-ball fuck you without blinking because it's so novel for them to see a foreigner, I can tell you that someone just staring at you is creepy, regardless of their age.

Consider that:

- You have to visibly tap the glasses to record

- People don't usually wear sunglasses indoors or at night (Corey Hart excluded)

- You're probably overestimating the amount of people that actually care if they get snapchatted

-Nobody else knows that. -That means they can't be used more than half the time. -No, I'm not.

Best comment so far

Edit: Thanks for the downvote.

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