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Snapchat Releases First Hardware Product, Spectacles

wsj.com

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Re: Snapchat Releases First Hardware Product, Spectacles

#311

Post by azakai »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #289
slewis wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Snapchat Releases First Hardware Product, Spectacles

#312

Post by madeofpalk »

PavlovsCat wrote: post #194
madeofpalk wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the snark was directed at the comments on this post, I'm certain "our" means us HN readers/commenters.

Don't assume all HN users are narcissists and politically uninterested. I for one have very personal needs that are directly connected to what is going on politically and socially in the world.

I'm not - I'm just saying that, generally speaking, most of our 'needs' (the important stuff like food, water, shelter) have been met. Everything else, mostly all that's discussed on this site, is unimportant & frivolous 'wants'.

I'm not saying this as a criticism, just explaining the comment thread.

Re: Snapchat Releases First Hardware Product, Spectacles

#313

Post by dilap »

yolesaber wrote: post #280
dilap wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Snapchat Releases First Hardware Product, Spectacles

#314

Post by maxerickson »

vonmoltke wrote: post #307
maxerickson wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pr…

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/

Re: Snapchat Releases First Hardware Product, Spectacles

#315

Post by ENGNR »

downandout wrote: post #291
keithwhor wrote: post #99

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 f…

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 invas…

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'

Re: Snapchat Releases First Hardware Product, Spectacles

#316

Post by ENGNR »

ams6110 wrote: post #301
keithwhor wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Re: Snapchat Releases First Hardware Product, Spectacles

#317

Post by dirkgently »

azakai wrote: post #311
PascLeRasc wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 c…

Am I allowed to puke now?

Re: Snapchat Releases First Hardware Product, Spectacles

#318

Post by cavisne »

ftrflyr wrote: post #39

Why? You need to seriously question the motives behind such a launch. IMHO: [1]Snapshot is an online multimedia application. [2]The infrastructure required to move from online to hardware requires significant investment (beyond the $1.8B they recently raised) - that of which I don't believe Snapchat can fund without a serious re-monetiziation strategy beyond Ads. It is only a matter of time before FB makes the move i…

In the past Snapchat has just used Amazon for fulfillment and sales of physical products

https://www.amazon.com/Snapchat-Inc/pages/10660293011

In terms of "hardware" Spectacles are almost a textbook example of what plenty of people with $0 funding do, tweak/private label a product from china and sell it on Amazon. Look at the range of "camera sunglasses" on Alibaba for starters.

The only difference with these are product design & software, two things that are core businesses for Snapchat. In terms of manufacturing, that custom Snapchat backpack would probably be trickier to get manufactured than this..

The fact that a product with less functionality than a $25 set of camera sunglasses on Alibaba is being compared to Google Glass really shows what a great PR/strategy move this has been for Snapchat.

Re: Snapchat Releases First Hardware Product, Spectacles

#319

Post by toomuchtodo »

fma wrote: post #308
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 camer…

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.

Re: Snapchat Releases First Hardware Product, Spectacles

#320

Post by bennettfeely »

whitecarpet wrote: post #232

Another huge innovation which is more about software than hardware is the new circular video format: you can rotate your phone and the video keeps its orientation. Quite impressive, you have to see it in action: https://twitter.com/ow/status/779592486461313025

Little humble brag, but here is a CodePen demo I made a little more than a year ago with a similar idea in mind:

http://codepen.io/bennettfeely/details/pjgrRL?preview_height...

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