They may need to have better marketing, like have an ad that mentions it in the app. I didn't know that Spectacles are selling on Amazon now and I don't believe many people know either. I think most assume that they're still being sold at those exclusive kiosks.
I'm very surprised how feminine this design is. It has strong overtures towards 50's cat-eye frames and looks exclusively marketed to women. I just ran through all the media/PR stuff I could find for this and can't find any official photos of a man wearing them. I wonder if they would have better luck also selling a male-fashion oriented model. This isn't a hypothetical as I would probably pick these up for ease of vacation photos/videos, especially for those of us with active children who are difficult to photograph well. I'd much rather wear these on a boat than try to take a video or photo with my $700 smartphone begging to end up on the bottom of the Atlantic.
Most of the reviews on amazon are from men and most of those complain about the style or being too small, so clearly men were very motivated to buy this product.
I think there's a fundamental marketing mistake here with wearable cameras. Its not really going to appeal to sexy instagram addicts who can't selfie with them, but to busy parents and older people, especially those with limited mobility or inability to quickly pull out a smartphone. I think its obvious that those kinds of markets don't bring in SV money, so here we are pretending women actually want to buy and wear these ridiculous looking things all day. Sorry, but the huge graphics around the lens mar an otherwise tasteful design. Clearly the market chose against this concept.
I'm also skeptical an always facing camera, be it on glasses, wearable watch/pedant, etc will ever be socially acceptable. Apparently, the Google Glasses problem hasn't been solved yet and may not ever be solved in the consumer space.
>Snaps from Spectacles do not directly go to your phone. You can save Snaps taken with Spectacles to your phone by exporting them from Snapchat Memories to your Camera roll
Also the implementation sounds wonky. I'm guessing this is a iOS limitation? On Android you should be able to write directly to the camera folder.
42K is low but the product appeals to a very small segment of consumers: Snapchat users, who don't wear prescription eyeglasses, who happen to have a face shape complimented by the single size/style of Spectacles.
I have a friend who wears the glasses to every social/party event in my larger friend circle and to public parties, and is one of the biggest attention whores I know.
Not even he is narcissistic enough to post the video up. I've never seen one video from the glasses.
Best I can tell he wears them as some kind of fashion statement in the weird and quirky SF gay tech scene.
To clarify the headline, TechCrunch is estimating Snap sold less than 105k Spectacles total, 64K in Q1 and 41K in Q2.
> Snap revealed during its call following weak Q2 earnings that it generated $5.4 million in “Other” revenue, which would equate to around 41,500 pairs of its Spectacles camera sunglasses at a $130 price point. That’s compared to $8.3 million in Other revenue in Q1, or fewer than 64,000 pairs
Literally, the only people I saw talking about those stupid glasses were people trying to shill the IPO online.
I think this wearable from Snap had multiple objectives.
1. Allow more people to be tied in directly to snapchat and make users more loyal and provide a better experience.
2. Create a new revenue stream based on wearables.
3. A PR vehicle to drive more users into the platform.
I think it accomplished #3. It may be able to accomplish 1-2 but we should wait and see. Also, something like Spectacles probably need a price drop to drive more people to buy it and the fact that this wearable doesn't drive people to upgrade to new spectacles would be an issue also.
Were the Specs ever meant to be more than a hype vehicle though? Obv. if it had blown up into an international phenomenon Spiegel & Co. would have taken it but I feel like it was more just a power strut en route to their IPO to show that people are excited about their platform more so than "Big Brother's"
I don't understand the target audience. The reason smartphones are so popular, is because they do basically EVERYTHING for the common person. They aren't going to carry around another silly device to take pics, that was called a camera, and we see how popular those are now. For anyone that is serious, they are already carrying separates.
Can you use these without uploading to Snapchat? I wouldn't mind getting one just for making videos. (Or is there a better glasses product for that?)
Spectacles was nothing more than a smart PR campaign that promised a steady drip of positive press leading into their IPO.
It was gimmicky, with no real-world use case, and "sold" as some kinda of geffen good that was only available in limited quantities.
Even if the execution was flawless why would anyone think this was a good idea in the first place?
I personally wouldn't wear Spectacles, but I did expect them to do much better than they have. It seems like people don't feel silly wearing GoPros or carrying selfie sticks so they looked like a logical next step to me.
Some anecdata: I have been traveling the U.S. for the last year, stopping in mostly major cities, and lived in Boston prior to that. In all that time I didn't see a single pair of Spectacles until last month... in Houston, TX of all places!
I wonder how much revenue their geofenced custom filters bring in?
No surprise there. There is no appeal to wearing your smartphone's camera on your face on a generic pair of glasses.
People spent hours carefully choosing their glasses. You won't be able to get everyone to buy the same design.
My reaction: wow 46,000 sold in q2 seems pretty good for a niche product.
Legit forgot they were still for sale. After all the hype and lack of product availability it simply skipped my mind that they were now readily available to the masses!
As I said last time... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14988588
That's still almost $5.5 million. Less than the cost of development, but probably not that far off.
Birth control you can wear on your face.
How many were they expecting to sell? This is an incredibly niche product.
I'm not surprised. Selling a hw product is hard.
I think the spectacles are pretty baller. Somebody send me some.
They're not even available where I live, can't say I'm surprised.
"Trendy" company selling highly-niche product? Short that company. The probability they are the next iPhone is very low, it's a low-risk short.
All of those spectacles, eventually, will go in the trash and into landfills. Few people think about that. If you buy a spectacle, you are literally buying future pollution. In 300 years, those spectacles and their batteries will still be polluting the ground and the water. Is this how we measure progress?
You mean people don't want to wear douchetacles? Color me surprised!
And before you downvote me, realize that basically, this is a gimmicky product, even if you think it is cool.
While you are allowed to film anyone in public, the act of having an "always pointing highly visible camera", will elicit more negative reactions than positive ones... So unless snap is pretty tone deaf, this was known to be a non long term product, more of a product to appease their top producer base.
Based on my brief exposure, Spectacles is a very polished product. Everything about it had an aura of breezy, forward-moving fun that is usually absent from tech: the purchase experience at a super-cute vending machine that displays a rendering of the glasses on your face; the yellow carrying case that doubles as extra battery for the glasses; the effortless installation experience; even the round video that invites peeking to discover hidden content at the edges.
I don't think Snap deserved their IPO valuation, and the company is uninvestable anyway because of the share structure that locks voting power forever away from common stock holders. But I'll be sad if Snap goes away because they're so different from everybody else in this space.