I feel really weird for being the first to bring this up, it seems pretty obvious to me the main reason these glasses weren't going to catch on.
First, wow I had no idea these existed
Second, where can I get them
Third, (months later) lost interest
Snapchat should have just had a buy now button in the app. Instead they tried to do some guerrilla marketing thing. If you have a captive audience of tens of millions of people, you don't need to create buzz around your product. Either you made something people want or you didn't. Me personally, they hurt my face. So I wore them about twice.
The guerrilla marketing was to keep Robert Scobles [1] from setting the Spectacles' zeitgeist. In that, it worked.
I agree that after they had lines they should have started marketing in app. A smooth transition would involve selectively marketing to those deemed to be general influencers, and then working down to the broader population. As a social network, it does seem odd to give away that home-field advantage.
[1] http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/5826657846e27af2008...
Prescient, given how toxic his personal brand now is.
i cant imagine the increase in content snapchat would have if it were recording what every subscriber was looking at.
I think we're in a spontaneity uncanny valley for that kind of use case, though, and we have to wait for the hardware (mostly low energy processing and battery) tech to catch up before we climb out of the valley. A lot of the popular content has some element of surprise/spontaneity to hook eyeballs in. I suspect a device form factor like Spectacles, or really, the "recording others" use case, won't take off for the masses until it is as light as normal sunglasses, as stylish, continuously records HD video and high-grade audio 16-20 hours before needing a recharge, and is coupled with management software that makes it easy to pick out what you want to publish (if you exclaim, "Woah! Did you see that!?", or more prosaically, "Worldsta-a-a-r!", that's picked up for a potential clip to publish, so you don't have to scrub through hours of video). Maybe coupled with an AR interface that gives you on-the-spot access to the publishing interface.
Until then, the "recording others" use case will likely continue to be dominated by right-place-right-time smartphone recordings, and pro/pro-am publishers/bloggers with scripted/guided content like what we see on YouTube today.
It strikes me as very strange that on all phones the good camera is on the back and the crappy one on the front. Many people mostly take selfies with their phones and so it would make much more sense to do the opposite.
What they actually wanted was something more like the cop drones in the new Blade Runner that hover about and take video in near silence. There are quite a few kickstarters that claim they can do this, but the drones are loud. This generates attention on the drone, not the corporate-shill. Err, sorry, snap-fluencer, my bad. Also, the battery life is terrible and I can see airspace getting crowded at homecoming in the multi-use-room.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sqdr/hexo-your-autonomo...
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/airdog/airdog-worlds-fi...
Spoiler: the video was misleading (California is suing them for false advertising) and the company is dead.
It is a real product, founded by a bunch of robotics people from Harvey Mudd.
Also it doesn't look like it has the capability to follow me in even most sedate urban environments. I mean, I'm not asking for stairs, but that thing looks like it'd have a hard time with a sidewalk crack.
Both those problems could probably be solved by making it bigger.
I could be wrong, but I bet there's a reasonably large market for 'inside only' selfie drones. If you look at who is posting on youtube, most of it is filmed indoors.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/airdog/introducing-the-...
https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2017/07/airdog-adii-2nd-gen-spor...
They can call it the "paparazzi" and Snapchat users will eat it up, it would be air and land based that makes them look like stars.
In all seriousness, the biggest use of Snapchat Spectacles or Google Glass is exploring but that view does lose the star aspect of what people desire on Snapchat. GoPro has that covered but also just a view of what the person is seeing isn't always the best view.
It could work with the drone/bot aspect to make it a full production. Still though, Snapchat is obsessed with angles that make you look the best so it might be something that would need to be edited/managed like a photo/video.