Snapchat, now Snap Inc and 150 million user-strong messaging app is broadening its horizons beyond the digital walls of the app with its first hardware product.
As wearable technology is probably the trendiest hardware sector, especially for young people, it makes sense for Snapchat’s first product to wearable.
Snapchat is mostly about “snapping” videos and photos, so it also makes sense that the product is a pair of image snapping sunglasses. The only thing that doesn’t make sense so far is the sunglasses will be released in the Fall – Summer would probably work better as around 110 million of the app’s users are based in the USA, Canada and Europe – where sunglasses in Fall ain’t great business. There again, Evan Spiegel, the main man at Snap Inc is worth around $2.1 billion which is $2.0999999 more than me, so what do I know..
Quite a lot of media outlets are making comparisons between the Snapchat glasses and Google Glass. Apart from the obvious “glasses” relation, I don’t see too much cause for comparison. Google Glass offer an augmented reality display whereas the Snapchat glasses do not. Then there’s the price; Google Glass (had) a price tag of around $1,500, Snap’s glasses will cost around $129.
The main association between the two tech-laden eyewears, is the camera. When Google Glass came onto the scene they were quickly criticised by many for their secret recording capabilities, and rightly so. Snap Inc have taken a step to try to iron out this flaw by equipping their video glasses with an LED indicator that lights up to let people know when they’re being filmed.
Snap’s specs certainly look cooler than Google Glass.
Adopters of Google Glass earned themselves one of the most famous nicknames in history, “Glassholes”. Whether wearers of the Snapchat Spectacles will be so luckily blessed with such a catchy name, “SnapTwat” maybe, remains to be seen.
Video glasses are nothing new, tons of them are already available. However, with Snapchat being one of the world’s trendiest brands among young people, with a 150m user-base, plus the spectacles looking pretty damn cool, they might just be a hit.
SnapTwat. Lol