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.
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 ).
But, if the lenses people see the world through is Snapchat then this makes perfect sense.
It's really not a bad name.
Solution: enjoy the spontaneous moment.
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 question is whether it can grow to anything bigger than instant film Polaroids, which people also buy and enjoy using at parties, etc.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
Gmail was pretty revolutionary when it came out, and nearly everyone in that 14-25 age group uses Chrome.
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.
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'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.