Another Thing to Charge During the Evening
Snapchat made two announcements today. First they are rebranding as Snap Inc. and they’re calling themselves a camera company, moving away from the “social networking site” category. Secondly, they announced that they’re going to start selling video-sharing sunglasses called Spectacles.
The connected Sunglasses will retail for $130 and it’s basically a dedicated hardware gadget for taking and playing back snaps. It has a single button to record and it does so with a 115-degree lens which is supposed to be the field of vision of a person. The playback also is supposed to let you feel like you’re seeing your own memory with your own eyes (versus seeing a video playback on a smartphone).
Snap Inc. CEO Evan Spiegel is pretty giddy and excited about this product. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal he recalled how he was amazed at the playback experience when he used the prototype while he was on vacation with his supermodel girlfriend, Miranda Kerr.
“It was our first vacation, and we went to Big Sur for a day or two. We were walking through the woods, stepping over logs, looking up at the beautiful trees. And when I got the footage back and watched it, I could see my own memory, through my own eyes—it was unbelievable. It’s one thing to see images of an experience you had, but it’s another thing to have an experience of the experience. It was the closest I’d ever come to feeling like I was there again.” -Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel
The Spectacles should come out within the year. We’re a bit skeptical about it but who knows this might be the next big thing. No one really took Snapchat seriously when they launched and look at how big they are today. We’ll try to get our hands on this as soon as we can.
