Despite disappointing results for its first (test?) run, Snap(chat) has released a second generation of its Spectacles wearable camera:
Snap today released the next generation of Spectacles, its wearable camera, with new features for taking photos and water resistance. The sunglasses, which have the same striking form as the first-generation model, have been slimmed down and now come in three jewel tones: onyx (black), ruby (red), and sapphire (blue). They're available to order starting today at Spectacles.com for $150 — $20 more than the previous model.
If you've followed the story of Spectacles so far, you know that the first version proved to be a costly misstep for Snap Inc. Although reviewers were generally impressed with their whimsical design, Snap made far more units than the 150,000 or so that it ultimately sold. The company wrote down nearly $40 million in merchandise, and laid off about a dozen people.
Even worse, from the company's perspective, is that people who bought Spectacles didn't use them for very long. According to Business Insider, less than half of users continued to use Spectacles a month after buying them. They were presented as the future of communication, but the first iteration of Spectacles felt more like a toy — a relatively cheap novelty that people used a handful of times before stuffing into a drawer.
Also at TechCrunch, The Guardian, Adweek, and Macworld.
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Snap's take on smartglasses has reportedly failed to live up to expectations:
A year ago, Snapchat was so excited about its first hardware product that it renamed itself Snap Inc. With the launch of Spectacles, CEO Evan Spiegel decided, the company would no longer be defined solely by the Snapchat app. It was not a social media company, he told the Wall Street Journal, but a camera company. Internet-connected photography, he philosophized, necessitated a "a reinvention of the camera."
Yeah, not so much. Citing "two people close to the company," the Information reported Monday that Snap had "badly overestimated demand" and now has "hundreds of thousands of unsold units sitting in warehouses, either fully assembled or in parts." This comes just weeks after Spiegel said at a Vanity Fair summit that Spectacles sales had "exceeded our expectations," topping 150,000. If the Information's reporting is accurate, then Spiegel's claim, well ... isn't. (A Snap spokesperson declined my request for comment.)
Regardless of who's telling the truth, it already seemed clear from Snap's first two earnings reports that Spectacles were fizzling. As Business Insider pointed out in August, the company reported just $5.4 million in "other" revenue in its second quarter, down from $8.3 million in its first quarter. Spectacles are presumed to make up the bulk of revenue in this category. It's one thing to only sell 150,000 of a product in its first year, as long as sales are growing. If they're already tailing off, that suggests the product might be doomed.
The devices let users record 10-30 seconds of video at a time. They are transferred to a smartphone wirelessly and can then be uploaded to Snapchat.
The company formerly known as Snapchat is launching new styles for its wearable camera glasses:
If the main hangup that's kept you from purchasing Snap's Spectacles has been their design, two new models that the company is introducing today might eliminate those hesitations. Snap has just announced the new Veronica and Nico styles of Spectacles 2. They contain all the same features and recording quality improvements as the model first introduced in April, but this time inside a more traditional look. It maybe won't be quite so obvious that you're wearing Spectacles anymore.
The new models of Spectacles are also different in a couple of other ways: they've got polarized lenses, and they come with a nondescript, black "semi-soft" case instead of the bright yellow hard case you get with the original Spectacles 2. Both the Veronica and Nico styles are available starting today for $199 in "limited quantities" at launch. This fall, they'll also be sold at select Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus stores in the US and a variety of retailers in Europe. And like before, Snap's partner Lensabl will let customers order prescription lenses for their glasses. Both models are only available in black for the time being.
Snap says that since the introduction of Spectacles 2, users have been posting, on average, 40 percent more photos and videos captured with the glasses. The company has also made it easier to share that content on other platforms outside Snapchat by adding automatic camera roll saves and by allowing users to export video in more conventional square and horizontal formats.
Check the article for several images of models looking cheerful while wearing the device.
Also at Engadget and TechCrunch.
Previously: Snapchat's Spectacles: A Bad Idea in Hindsight
Snapchat Takes a Second Shot at Wearable Camera "Spectacles"
Snapchat's PR firm sues influencer for not promoting Spectacles on Instagram
Influencer marketing could get a lot more accountable if Snapchat's PR firm wins this lawsuit. Snapchat hoped that social media stars promoting v2 of its Spectacles camera sunglasses on its biggest competitor could boost interest after it only sold 220,000 of v1 and had to take a $40 million write-off. Instead, Snap comes off looking a little desperate to make Spectacles seem cool.
Snap Inc. commissioned its public relations firm PR Consulting (real imaginative) to buy it an influencer marketing campaign on Instagram. The firm struck a deal with Grown-ish actor Luka Sabbat after he was seen cavorting with Kourtney Kardashian. Sabbat got paid $45,000 up front with the promise of another $15,000 to post himself donning Spectacles on Instagram.
He was contracted to make one Instagram feed post and three Stories posts with him wearing Specs, plus be photographed wearing them in public at Paris and Milan Fashion Weeks. He was supposed to add swipe-up-to-buy links to two of those Story posts, get all the posts pre-approved with PRC, and send it analytics metrics about their performance.
But Sabbat skipped out on two of the Stories, one of the swipe-ups, the photo shoots, the pre-approvals and the analytics. So as Variety's Gene Maddaus first reported, PRC is suing Sabbat to recoup the $45,000 it already paid plus another $45,000 in damages.
The lawsuit might give Spectacles more exposure than Mr. Sabbat would have.
Also at Business Insider, Engadget, and Entrepreneur.
Previously: Snapchat's Spectacles: A Bad Idea in Hindsight
Snapchat Takes a Second Shot at Wearable Camera "Spectacles"
Snap Gives Spectacles a Face Lift to Look More Like Traditional Sunglasses
Tencent this week unveiled its answer to the video-recording sunglasses, which, you'll notice, bear a striking resemblance to Snap's Spectacles.
Called the Weishi smartglasses, Tencent's wearable camera sports a lens in the front corner that allows users to film from a first-person perspective. Thankfully, the Chinese gaming and social giant has not made the mistake of Snap's first-generation Spectacles, which highlighted the camera with a conspicuous yellow ring.
[...] The purpose behind Tencent's new gadget is implicit in its name. Weishi, which means "micro videos" in Chinese, is also the name of the short-video sharing app that Tencent has been aggressively promoting in recent months to catch up with market dominators TikTok and Kuaishou.
Related: Snapchat Takes a Second Shot at Wearable Camera "Spectacles"
Snap Gives Spectacles a Face Lift to Look More Like Traditional Sunglasses
Instagram "Influencer" Sued for $90,000 for Not Sufficiently Sporting Snapchat's Spectacles
Snap announces Spectacles 3 with an updated design and a second HD camera
Snap today announced Spectacles 3, a redesigned version of its augmented reality sunglasses with a sleek new design and an added HD camera to create depth perception. The glasses, which the company has positioned as a limited release, represent Snap's latest effort to build a new computing platform centered on the face. They will go on sale on Spectacles.com in November for $380.
That makes them more than twice as expensive as last year's model, which cost $150. Snap executives say the higher-end version is meant to appeal to a smaller group of "fashion-forward" creative types. It may also be designed to recoup more of its manufacturing costs for the famously money-losing product; Snapchat wrote down nearly $40 million in costs associated with the first version of the glasses after wildly overestimating demand.
The high price of Spectacles 3 will likely limit their appeal, particularly among the high school and college-age students who make up Snapchat's core user base. A Snap spokesperson said this year's model represented a necessary investment in the platform. The company has to figure out a way to do AR computing right, the logic goes, before it can do it cheaply.
Not quite VR180 given the 1216×1216 video.
Previously: Snapchat's Spectacles: A Bad Idea in Hindsight
Snapchat Takes a Second Shot at Wearable Camera "Spectacles"
Snap Gives Spectacles a Face Lift to Look More Like Traditional Sunglasses
Instagram "Influencer" Sued for $90,000 for Not Sufficiently Sporting Snapchat's Spectacles
Snap Will Reportedly Release AR-Enabled Spectacles With Dual Cameras
Ray-Ban Stories: These are Facebook's first mass-market smart glasses
As previously rumored, Facebook has partnered with EssilorLuxottica to produce Ray-Ban Stories, one of the first potentially viable attempts at mass-market smart glasses. They are similar in some ways to early iterations of Snapchat Spectacles but with a more stylish aesthetic that looks right in line with other Ray-Ban glasses.
The glasses have two front-facing cameras, each at 5 megapixels. Users can take a photo either with a touch gesture or with a "Hey Facebook" voice command. So people in the room can tell that pictures or video are being taken, a white LED on the front of the frames will light up. Videos can be as long as 30 seconds.
[...] The Ray-Ban Stories are equipped with a Snapdragon processor, but they don't have displays in the lenses. So these are by no means augmented reality (AR) glasses.
Also at Wccftech.
Related: Snapchat Takes a Second Shot at Wearable Camera "Spectacles"
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday April 28 2018, @12:38AM (2 children)
MUH GOYIM.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @12:41AM (1 child)
This story is also discussed over at PornHub under cumonmyglasses, featuring suspiciously jewish-looking porn stars.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday April 28 2018, @01:57AM
I am not privy to the working lives of people here or elsewhere (with rare exceptions), but at least one on Slashdot and probably many silent others "do adult." They tend to have libertarian principles. You can see common themes and threads from the minorities working at Google, down into the depths of the underworld of porn.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @12:52AM (5 children)
Kidding aside, the first person who looks at me while wearing these glasses is going to get one chance to remove them and put them
in a place where they cannot be seen.
That chance will expire quickly and be followed by the glasses being removed and stomped into bits on the floor. An optional stomping will be available
for anyone who tries to tell me they have the "right" to take video of me without my permission. Save your bullshit about it being ok to take video in a public place, tat will get you a beat-down where I live.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @03:45AM (1 child)
How are you defining "public place"? A public street or something? If you do that and run into the police, or get recorded destroying a livestreaming device, and maybe you'll end up in prison for assault. You'll come out unemployable, and probably get divorced if applicable.
If you live in some favela, rough part of town, or other urban hellhole, maybe you'll get away with it, but you probably have bigger problems to worry about than being recorded by a millennial.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @03:52AM
Not if he's a cop.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @08:14AM (2 children)
Well, the way those glasses even look, they kinda make it obvious you are being filmed.
Would I be at ease around anyone wearing them? Uhh.. no. I may well commit a social faux-pas in its view. I commit social faux-pas all the time, but most of the time, its a red face and a laugh, not something to either be used to blackmail me or discover on some "laugh at the idiot" video on YouTube.
Hell, I feel uneasy if someone appears to be filming me while I am eating, even though I know good and well they are probably holding their phone that way to get a better view of its screen. Who knows, maybe I have something embarrassing on my face or something, or pigeon poo in my hair... who knows?
I would be far more likely to go to a diner in almost anything ( maybe nothing at all ) than to show up wearing something like that. But that's just me - a guy coming up on 70 - and we old farts seem to have a much different take on respecting other people's privacy than the younger folk do. Would one show respect to put the damn thing away when visiting the men's room - or would I look at the next stall over to see this pair of glasses recording my trying to pass water without getting it all over me or the floor?
Or the ladies could wear this into the ladies' room and generate all sorts of stuff they could upload to xvideos.com.
Apparently, everything streams to SnapChat, as apparently you have to log onto your SnapChat account [spectacles.com] to view your footage.
Do you have any control or "copyright" of your stuff once its "in the cloud"? Although our Government passes Copyright Law, I sure don't think they are bound by it themselves.
The fact you have to have a SnapChat account now means they have a real name of a real person to link the footage to! Your name!!! Another treasure trove of footage should any person or agency have any urge to go snoop through your life... find out who your friends are... whatever. I guess we all should know for now just how cheap digital storage is these days... so what if they have a terabyte of crap on you.... they can cross-reference everything - and Gawd knows what kind of facial recognition technologies are around the corner... so cross-referencing all your friends and construction of search trees - completely automated - is well within the realm of do-ability.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @01:23PM
Facial recognition is already here in a major way. Better believe every major department store is connected to a nationwide database with customer facial imagery, and automatic alerts for serial shoplifters. If my cellmates from the last stint in the county were telling the truth, it's quite accurate and also analyzes gait and other traits which make disguise and concealment quite difficult.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @01:28PM
So, if I read this right
1. These glasses stream whatever they see to the Snapchat account of the idiot wearing them.
2. Snapchat makes money out of adslinging to the people who subsequently view this footage (genuinely don't know what their business model is, have never seen/used Snapchat).
If point 2 is correct, then irrespective of the motives of the wearer of the glasses, arguably this 'filming' is ultimately being done for commercial purposes, with the wearer becoming, in effect, an unpaid cameraman providing footage for Snapchat's financial gain. I can see some lawyers having fun with this.
If now, indeed, 'All the world's a stage' thanks to these sort of devices, then I'll be wanting my Equity card and whatever the standard rates are these days for extras from Snapchat and their ilk.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday April 28 2018, @04:43PM
It's reasonable for companies to keep working on this line, as at some point someone's going to have a huge success. But I don't like it and I don't want it. It's going to need to be *really* unobtrusive. And at that point it will do interesting things to social rules. (Cell phones already have...but this is going to be different.)
OTOH, one thing I can safely predict is sites where people show videos of everything they eat.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.