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Snap sold fewer than 42K Spectacles, down 35% in Q2

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Re: Snap sold fewer than 42K Spectacles, down 35% in Q2

#161
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine it they would've done a female styled version, and got Kim Kardashian wearing them? Why is that less legitimate? The parent is being downvoted because of the implicit criticism is that a female-first targeted rollout is a mistake.

I think the parent would have drawn the same criticism if the exclusively marketed towards men. I think his point was simply that their marketing misses 50% of the market. His point is not that it's wrong to only market towards women, his point was that it seems weird from a revenue perspective to only market to to half the population.

A lot of products start with half the population, though, and it's not considered weird. The old euphemism is "shrink it and pink it" - originally design for men, then put out a women's version.

If Spectacles take off, they can always "grow it and bro it" later. Starting off with a focused target market seems like a reasonable approach to me.

Re: Snap sold fewer than 42K Spectacles, down 35% in Q2

#162
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bluetooth working great for Apple AirPods. I think Snapchat is having a software problem.

I agree that it's a software problem, but most vendors aren't in apple's position of controlling every single link of the chain. I do think it'll get better over time. NFC/tap pairing will eventually replace Menu + Manual Madness, show-stopping bugs will get fixed, capability sets will stabilize, conventions will develop to smooth over variation in UI choices, "worse is better" decisions will be unwound, and eventual…

You must definitely add investor pressure in all of this, and if history is of any indication, that pressure can and will kill any creative efforts. It's all about being first to market, making a big buck and having a lucrative exit nowadays.

Nobody is interested in the tech becoming more comfortable.

Re: Snap sold fewer than 42K Spectacles, down 35% in Q2

#163
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree - there is no "target audience" for shit UX. Their "target audience" uses Snap despite its awful UX, not because of it. Those users wouldn't suddenly run away if the UX did actually improve.

Perhaps I'm just used to it, but I find SC's UI/UX to be quite nice to use. I would be disappointed if Snapchat's UI changed to be more like Instagram's; IG's UI may be more discoverable, but it just doesn't feel as smooth.

I liked the UI of early Snapchat (2013) when there was only a recent Snaps list and a camera view and you could swipe between them. It all went downhill from there, but the biggest blow for me was the stupid thing that you have to pull down when in the camera view to get access to your contacts. I wish the "designer" that had this stupid idea would be sentenced to several years of reading all text in nothing but Comic Sans.

Re: Snap sold fewer than 42K Spectacles, down 35% in Q2

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I'm a fan of Google Glass, but how do the Spectacles qualify as "something different" when Glass came out like 5 years ago? You can say that Spectacles are well-executed, but claiming that they're somehow "trying something different" makes no sense to me.

The only quality they share with Glass is that they have a camera, you wear them on your face and they tether to your phone. All of which had been done before Glass.

Uh yea, isn't that the entirety of the product? What is the "something different" that you're imagining?
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