11 ms·

Why Snapchat didn’t give Spectacles to techies

99 points by kitwalker12 10y ago

neya 10y ago
tldr; 1) Artificial Scarcity 2) Geographic Clustering 3) Buying As An Experience 4) Identifying customers Edit: Included 4)
- kitwalker12 10y ago
  Also identifying customers
  - neya 10y ago
    Thank you, included!
- edblarney 10y ago
  Those are all good points, but the top ones are: A) The fashionable design of the glasses, which are a cross between 'very contemporary cool design' with a hint of 'tokyo bubble gum plastic irreverence' B) Aesthetically and functionally perfectly and seamlessly consistent with their brand, and their product experience. C) When you say 'geographic clustering' - the more important point is where. Santa Monica, Big Sur. 'Cool Kid venues'. No t downtown LA or Orange County. D) The 'scarcity' ... because there are so very few glasses being sold right now, I don't think it's an economic issue so much, although that applies - right now, the 'popup' store is a brilliant PR move. Every day, there'll be a huge buzz over where it is, and the kids getting them will proudly wear them to school, brag about them, creating all sorts of local buzz. Snapchat is acting like Nike or Starbucks, and not a tech company, which is very smart of them. Funny they are in LA - there are almost zero Valley companies outside of apple that know how to do proper consumer marketing.
dmreedy 10y ago
In retrospect, and especially in comparison, Google Glass really was beautiful, especially the lensless models. I respect the design in a similar way to something like the Microsoft Band, which didn't try to be a watch, but instead embraced the idea of a wrist-interface, with the display on the inside of the wrist, and running in-line with the band as opposed to perpendicular to it. Maybe I'll feel that way about Spectacles in 2020.
jknoepfler 10y ago
I look forward to a future in which we are all wearing ridiculously walled-garden tech on our faces, and a future in which we've gotten over it. I feel like just as we're slowly recovering the art of making food from the excesses of the early 20th century, our children's children will have to recover the art of being a social human being from the excesses of the early 21st century. I recognize that otherizing an inevitable technology (ubiquitous connected vision) is taking the wrong side of history, but I hope my grandchildren make fun of my children for it. I think it's interesting that the article did not describe the device's capacities at all. In the meantime, I think Snapchat's marketing angle is ingenious. They decided to build trust, but not in the community of makers as Google did, they built trust in the community of shameless consumers (I mean that non-perjoratively). Google's mistake is understandable when you think that they are also trying to be respected in the cloud/app maker/developer space. Snapchat does not have that problem.
- dilap 10y ago
  it's good marketing, but it's also an interesting tool. hey, look, you can take a snap super-easily and unobtrusively with a much more intimate camera-angle. google's mistake was...wtf was the point of glass? to look like a rich cyborg douchebag?
- trymas 10y ago
  >In the meantime, I think Snapchat's marketing angle is ingenious. IMHO it's not something very ingenious, they are shooting ideas - some of them stick to the wall. > They <...> built trust in the community of shameless consumers ..and that's why the idea sticks (just like whole snapchat et al.). It's shameless and to put it more straight - frequently egoistic (and maybe arrogant as well?) users who use this and go crazy about it. With google's glass the media raged about how it's a huge privacy problem [&]. Snapchat's spectacles? Genius!! Short memory. [&] Though to be more critical, having a huge price point and available to few people was the problem as well, but IMHO the media sunk the ship before it was a float by labeling it as a huge privacy issue.
  - Lewton 10y ago
farright 10y ago
>If you want to make something cool, don’t give it to geeks first. Does anyone else get really tired of stuff like this? Why is it that every possible difference is celebrated except within liberal circles, with the exception that nerds are considered objectively bad. In fact the article comes across as body shaming.
- sidlls 10y ago
  Othering of "nerds" isn't restricted to liberals.
  - farright 10y ago
    "othering" of nerds isn't restricted to liberals but it is especially hypocritical when they do it. Also liberals are predisposed to "other" nerds because they have chosen nerds to be the symbol of unaware privilege and crude libertarianism so in their thinking nerds deserve no sympathy.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      I am somewhat amused by this because I've been a liberal and nerd my whole life, participated extensively in liberal activist circles, and never once encountered this among liberals (the closest to this I've seen would be some segments of the community's reaction to perceived ivory tower intellectuals that are distant from pragmatics, but even that isn't so much an othering as a sometimes white-hot debate about priorities and tactics within the movement.)
      - vostok 10y ago
        Even as a liberal I think there's actually something to this idea. You can see it with things like the financial transaction tax proposals that are clearly meant to hurt nerdy HFTs rather than affect banks. I think part of it is that nerdy HFTs aren't eloquent enough to explain what they're doing and how it benefits the world.
bitwize 10y ago
TL;DR, don't make and market tech products for tech people, because they're all queasy autists who will make your product look dorky and ugly. Aim your products at the cool people, the beautiful people, the Kardashians and Iggy Azaleas of the world. They're the people who matter.
- oliv__ 10y ago
  Yikes...
- chinathrow 10y ago
  Who matter to drive sales ;)
- bsaul 10y ago
  Maybe this is the start of a sanity check in the IT world. Geeks are dorky and weird, and most of us have big social awkwardness. Maybe we'll find a good middle ground, where we could stop caring about looking cool and using the latest trendy tech, and just get back to be good professionals.
- leereeves 10y ago
  When it comes to fashion (which wearables are) they probably are the people who matter.
- croon 10y ago
  I see what you're saying, and I agree to some extent, but I'll make a distinction I believe in. There's no doubt that tech people have mattered in driving a lot of products and services by being early adopters. However, there is a difference between "tech products" and fashion accessories, which I think this is, even if it happens to also be technical. On a separate but related note, as a lifelong nerd I feel comfortable in saying this: There are few things I cringe more at than nerds getting rich and popular without handling that gracefully. If I were to market a product I would definitely market through "professional" famous people that are comfortable with that role, for good and bad.
- flashman 10y ago
  > They're the people who matter. For the marketing purposes of driving mass adoption of your fashion product: yes, unquestionably. If tech people want to drive fashion, maybe they should stop looking down their noses at the industry and embrace it.
drivingmenuts 10y ago
Did they fix the privacy issues that arose with Google glasses or is everyone just conveniently forgetting that?
- RossM 10y ago
  Snapchat-loyal press have been well trained to highlight the spinning LEDs and not question the privacy angle. Perhaps they're "ok" with it because clips are shorter and it's not the big bad G. IMO while it's more noticeable than Glass's single pixel it's still a concealed camera.
  - dilap 10y ago
    probably the same in practice, but glass really looked like it was trying to be inconspicuous / disappear, which made it much creepier. specs are so clearly conspicuous and not trying to hide that it makes them seem more harmless. also, i'd say there's a general cultural trend of becoming more and more comfortable with less and less privacy.
    - geon 10y ago
      > glass really looked like it was trying to be inconspicuous / disappear How? If anything, the lense-less frame with a bulge on the side is very noticable.
      - dilap 10y ago
        well, it didn't do a great job of it :) to me, it still looks stylistically like it's trying to disappear, like it wants to blend in and become unnoticable. it doesn't seem to be making an obvious "i'm here" fashion statement like the specs. obviously it's a subjective emotional statement and difficult to support or refute, but i really do believe the vastly different appearances of the two products probably has a lot to do with the different reactions they are receiving. people are emotional, visual creates.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
jpatokal 10y ago
> That’s why the first memorable photos of Spectacles weren’t shot by Scoble, but by famous fashion photographer Karl Lagerfeld. How soon we forget: Google Glass actually collaborated with Diane von Furstenberg (a famous fashion designer) and did a launch party at New York Fashion Week. https://www.fastcompany.com/3001142/google-glass-hits-runway-fashion-week https://www.fastcompany.com/3001142/google-glass-hits-runway... But Google positioned Glass as a platform for apps, meaning they had to get devs in the loop, while Spectacles are intended for precisely one thing: Snapchat.
- makapuf 10y ago
  Besides, Karl lagerfeld is a famous fashion designer (couturier) that happens to take photos, not a photographer.
  - alexandersingh 10y ago
    I think he'd disagree with you :P
- intoverflow2 10y ago
  >How soon we forget: Google Glass actually collaborated with Diane von Furstenberg (a famous fashion designer) and did a launch party at New York Fashion Week. They still courted the tech press massively though, none of us remember that fashion week launch. But we all remember the guy screaming in the shower and Sergey on stage wearing Glass with Crocs.
- edblarney 10y ago
  Even though G*Glasses were 'in a fashion' show doesn't mean in any way there were positioned in the proper aspirational way. Though yes, I agree they had to get devs in the loop 'because apps'. Snapchat is almost proper consumer marketing company. Google is a tech company - and they had absolutely no idea how to market and position those glasses to consumers.
  - trymas 10y ago
douche 10y ago
I would suspect that techies are not particularly avid users of Snapchat in the first place.
- fullshark 10y ago
  I don't really get it or this product. I'm not sure why "ubiquitous shared vision is inevitable."
YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
Wow. A pair of glasses that not even Karl Lagerfeld can make look cool. Also- did Snapchat really think those tiny ballons were enough to lift that snapbot vending machine off the ground? Don't make me laugh, Snapchat!

99 points by kitwalker12 10y ago

neya 10y ago

tldr; 1) Artificial Scarcity 2) Geographic Clustering 3) Buying As An Experience 4) Identifying customers Edit: Included 4)

kitwalker12 10y ago
Also identifying customers
- neya 10y ago
  Thank you, included!
edblarney 10y ago
Those are all good points, but the top ones are: A) The fashionable design of the glasses, which are a cross between 'very contemporary cool design' with a hint of 'tokyo bubble gum plastic irreverence' B) Aesthetically and functionally perfectly and seamlessly consistent with their brand, and their product experience. C) When you say 'geographic clustering' - the more important point is where. Santa Monica, Big Sur. 'Cool Kid venues'. No t downtown LA or Orange County. D) The 'scarcity' ... because there are so very few glasses being sold right now, I don't think it's an economic issue so much, although that applies - right now, the 'popup' store is a brilliant PR move. Every day, there'll be a huge buzz over where it is, and the kids getting them will proudly wear them to school, brag about them, creating all sorts of local buzz. Snapchat is acting like Nike or Starbucks, and not a tech company, which is very smart of them. Funny they are in LA - there are almost zero Valley companies outside of apple that know how to do proper consumer marketing.

dmreedy 10y ago

In retrospect, and especially in comparison, Google Glass really was beautiful, especially the lensless models. I respect the design in a similar way to something like the Microsoft Band, which didn't try to be a watch, but instead embraced the idea of a wrist-interface, with the display on the inside of the wrist, and running in-line with the band as opposed to perpendicular to it. Maybe I'll feel that way about Spectacles in 2020.

jknoepfler 10y ago

I look forward to a future in which we are all wearing ridiculously walled-garden tech on our faces, and a future in which we've gotten over it. I feel like just as we're slowly recovering the art of making food from the excesses of the early 20th century, our children's children will have to recover the art of being a social human being from the excesses of the early 21st century. I recognize that otherizing an inevitable technology (ubiquitous connected vision) is taking the wrong side of history, but I hope my grandchildren make fun of my children for it. I think it's interesting that the article did not describe the device's capacities at all. In the meantime, I think Snapchat's marketing angle is ingenious. They decided to build trust, but not in the community of makers as Google did, they built trust in the community of shameless consumers (I mean that non-perjoratively). Google's mistake is understandable when you think that they are also trying to be respected in the cloud/app maker/developer space. Snapchat does not have that problem.

dilap 10y ago
it's good marketing, but it's also an interesting tool. hey, look, you can take a snap super-easily and unobtrusively with a much more intimate camera-angle. google's mistake was...wtf was the point of glass? to look like a rich cyborg douchebag?
trymas 10y ago
>In the meantime, I think Snapchat's marketing angle is ingenious. IMHO it's not something very ingenious, they are shooting ideas - some of them stick to the wall. > They <...> built trust in the community of shameless consumers ..and that's why the idea sticks (just like whole snapchat et al.). It's shameless and to put it more straight - frequently egoistic (and maybe arrogant as well?) users who use this and go crazy about it. With google's glass the media raged about how it's a huge privacy problem [&]. Snapchat's spectacles? Genius!! Short memory. [&] Though to be more critical, having a huge price point and available to few people was the problem as well, but IMHO the media sunk the ship before it was a float by labeling it as a huge privacy issue.
- Lewton 10y ago

farright 10y ago

>If you want to make something cool, don’t give it to geeks first. Does anyone else get really tired of stuff like this? Why is it that every possible difference is celebrated except within liberal circles, with the exception that nerds are considered objectively bad. In fact the article comes across as body shaming.

sidlls 10y ago
Othering of "nerds" isn't restricted to liberals.
- farright 10y ago
  "othering" of nerds isn't restricted to liberals but it is especially hypocritical when they do it. Also liberals are predisposed to "other" nerds because they have chosen nerds to be the symbol of unaware privilege and crude libertarianism so in their thinking nerds deserve no sympathy.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    I am somewhat amused by this because I've been a liberal and nerd my whole life, participated extensively in liberal activist circles, and never once encountered this among liberals (the closest to this I've seen would be some segments of the community's reaction to perceived ivory tower intellectuals that are distant from pragmatics, but even that isn't so much an othering as a sometimes white-hot debate about priorities and tactics within the movement.)
    - vostok 10y ago
      Even as a liberal I think there's actually something to this idea. You can see it with things like the financial transaction tax proposals that are clearly meant to hurt nerdy HFTs rather than affect banks. I think part of it is that nerdy HFTs aren't eloquent enough to explain what they're doing and how it benefits the world.

bitwize 10y ago

TL;DR, don't make and market tech products for tech people, because they're all queasy autists who will make your product look dorky and ugly. Aim your products at the cool people, the beautiful people, the Kardashians and Iggy Azaleas of the world. They're the people who matter.

oliv__ 10y ago
Yikes...
chinathrow 10y ago
Who matter to drive sales ;)
bsaul 10y ago
Maybe this is the start of a sanity check in the IT world. Geeks are dorky and weird, and most of us have big social awkwardness. Maybe we'll find a good middle ground, where we could stop caring about looking cool and using the latest trendy tech, and just get back to be good professionals.
leereeves 10y ago
When it comes to fashion (which wearables are) they probably are the people who matter.
croon 10y ago
I see what you're saying, and I agree to some extent, but I'll make a distinction I believe in. There's no doubt that tech people have mattered in driving a lot of products and services by being early adopters. However, there is a difference between "tech products" and fashion accessories, which I think this is, even if it happens to also be technical. On a separate but related note, as a lifelong nerd I feel comfortable in saying this: There are few things I cringe more at than nerds getting rich and popular without handling that gracefully. If I were to market a product I would definitely market through "professional" famous people that are comfortable with that role, for good and bad.
flashman 10y ago
> They're the people who matter. For the marketing purposes of driving mass adoption of your fashion product: yes, unquestionably. If tech people want to drive fashion, maybe they should stop looking down their noses at the industry and embrace it.

drivingmenuts 10y ago

Did they fix the privacy issues that arose with Google glasses or is everyone just conveniently forgetting that?

RossM 10y ago
Snapchat-loyal press have been well trained to highlight the spinning LEDs and not question the privacy angle. Perhaps they're "ok" with it because clips are shorter and it's not the big bad G. IMO while it's more noticeable than Glass's single pixel it's still a concealed camera.
- dilap 10y ago
  probably the same in practice, but glass really looked like it was trying to be inconspicuous / disappear, which made it much creepier. specs are so clearly conspicuous and not trying to hide that it makes them seem more harmless. also, i'd say there's a general cultural trend of becoming more and more comfortable with less and less privacy.
  - geon 10y ago
    > glass really looked like it was trying to be inconspicuous / disappear How? If anything, the lense-less frame with a bulge on the side is very noticable.
    - dilap 10y ago
      well, it didn't do a great job of it :) to me, it still looks stylistically like it's trying to disappear, like it wants to blend in and become unnoticable. it doesn't seem to be making an obvious "i'm here" fashion statement like the specs. obviously it's a subjective emotional statement and difficult to support or refute, but i really do believe the vastly different appearances of the two products probably has a lot to do with the different reactions they are receiving. people are emotional, visual creates.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]

jpatokal 10y ago

> That’s why the first memorable photos of Spectacles weren’t shot by Scoble, but by famous fashion photographer Karl Lagerfeld. How soon we forget: Google Glass actually collaborated with Diane von Furstenberg (a famous fashion designer) and did a launch party at New York Fashion Week. https://www.fastcompany.com/3001142/google-glass-hits-runway-fashion-week https://www.fastcompany.com/3001142/google-glass-hits-runway... But Google positioned Glass as a platform for apps, meaning they had to get devs in the loop, while Spectacles are intended for precisely one thing: Snapchat.

makapuf 10y ago
Besides, Karl lagerfeld is a famous fashion designer (couturier) that happens to take photos, not a photographer.
- alexandersingh 10y ago
  I think he'd disagree with you :P
intoverflow2 10y ago
>How soon we forget: Google Glass actually collaborated with Diane von Furstenberg (a famous fashion designer) and did a launch party at New York Fashion Week. They still courted the tech press massively though, none of us remember that fashion week launch. But we all remember the guy screaming in the shower and Sergey on stage wearing Glass with Crocs.
edblarney 10y ago
Even though G*Glasses were 'in a fashion' show doesn't mean in any way there were positioned in the proper aspirational way. Though yes, I agree they had to get devs in the loop 'because apps'. Snapchat is almost proper consumer marketing company. Google is a tech company - and they had absolutely no idea how to market and position those glasses to consumers.
- trymas 10y ago

douche 10y ago

I would suspect that techies are not particularly avid users of Snapchat in the first place.

fullshark 10y ago
I don't really get it or this product. I'm not sure why "ubiquitous shared vision is inevitable."

YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago

Wow. A pair of glasses that not even Karl Lagerfeld can make look cool. Also- did Snapchat really think those tiny ballons were enough to lift that snapbot vending machine off the ground? Don't make me laugh, Snapchat!