‘Spectacles are the Anti-Glass’
Late Friday night, Snapchat morphed into Snap, Inc. and announced their first piece of hardware (after being caught ‘in the wild’ a few months ago) called ‘Spectacles’. While the obvious comparison is Google Glass, these are the anti-Glass in many ways, and the best writeup I’ve seen so far on this is from Drew Breunig.
Breunig believes this is very intentional, saying that several choices seem to address to problems of Glass explicitly, listing a few off:
They added a bright light to show others you’re recording. They limited video to 10 second clips, not persistent documentation. And, most importantly, they made Spectacles sunglasses.
Sunglasses are worn occasionally. Sunglasses aren’t worn inside. Everyone wears sunglasses. Sunglasses make sense during public, fun times. Wear sunglasses inside and you’re considered “that guy,” no onboard camera required. Choosing sunglasses specifically tightly confines Spectacles’ use cases to social acceptable contexts. Spectacles work within cultural norms rather than attempt to redefine them.
Spectacles are odd for many reasons, not the least of which is the very limited ambition the product seems to have. In a tech scene where every product is heralded as the next thing that will change your life, Evan Spiegel calls Spectacles a toy and says they’ll be rolled out slowly. This is not a product that is meant to be on every single face, every minute of the day. It’s meant to be on the one person at the party, who’s Story on Snapchat is good enough the next morning that someone else will buy a pair. Repeat, repeat, repeat — and then the next version of Spectacles will come out, adding a new feature which will convinced another subset of users to give them a try.
Breunig thinks it will be VR. That’s very possible. It could also be convenience. Though right now limited recording is actually a feature (because of the freaky feeling of hanging out with someone that’s potentially recording every minute), Spectacles and similar technology could become so familiar that recording no longer feels ‘wrong’, and the device could constantly record, needing you to only tap after something great happened to save something great.
Regardless, what’s remarkable about Spectacles isn’t necessarily the product, but the focused vision from the company that’s created it. As Breunig concludes:
Snap just took a specialty product and showed how it might become mass. Not an epic camera for epic people during epic times, but a fun camera for fun people during fun times.
Which market would you rather have?
Snapchat answered that question with confidence.
