15 ms·

Why Snapchat Spectacles failed

189 points by alfozan 9y ago

HumFac2 9y ago
Here is detailed usability and feature function allocation analysis. This product was dead in the water from the beginning. https://www.mauronewmedia.com/blog/snap-spectacles-failed-poor-usability-featurefunction-allocation-errors-compromised-potentially-breakthrough-product/ https://www.mauronewmedia.com/blog/snap-spectacles-failed-po... Mauro Usability Science
adamnemecek 9y ago
TLDR hw is hard, “fashion” hw is double hard
- lowmagnet 9y ago
  Also, they didn't learn anything from the 'glasshole' phenomenon. The attention span of fishes.
  - adamnemecek 9y ago
    I’m guessing they took it into consideration but thought hey could do better.
  - Fricken 9y ago
    Glass was released in 2012. For the teenagers that Spectacles was being targeted at, 2012 is ancient history.
    - Camillo 9y ago
      It's ancient history to me, and I'm not even a teenager. I can't believe it was 2012... I would have said 2005 or something. According to Wikipedia, it was actually 2013. Wow.
  - hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
    Spectacles may have failed, but on the contrary, I think they made a whole different set of mistakes than Glass: 1. They specifically focused on the fashion-conscious aspect initially (e.g. the Karl Lagerfeld shoot), and purposefully tried to keep the specs away from the nerdy tech press. In the early stages this was actual really successful, and at the very least they got "fashion buzz" when Spectacles came out. 2. They highlighted that Spectacles have a big light go on when recording, which helped blunt some of the "creepiness factor". In fact, I think they did a largely good job of positioning Spectacles as "fun way to take video with friends" as opposed to Glass's "cyborg assistant" approach.
- baby 9y ago
  It's interesting how on the other side Apple has succeeded with the Apple watch even though you need to recharge it every day. My guess is that it was highly priced and so seen as a "rich people" jewelry. Hence the market being driven by people who want to look rich. I'm sure that if snapchat spectacles had been priced lower, every middle schooler would have gotten them. Driving the market/trend by mass adoption.
  - rifung 9y ago
    But isn't the Apple watch useful? I definitely see the appeal of being able to see notifications without having to take out my phone. I don't think it's worth the cost for me, but for those who just enjoy using technology and playing with the newest thing, I can see why you'd want one. Plus, I'm sure they make nice gifts. I don't really buy that they're seen as rich people jewelry. It's less than an iPhone and priced like a budget or fashion brand watch. Of course, this could be my bias showing! To me, the Apple Watch is cheap enough that you'd consider getting one as a gift for someone special, so not show-off expensive but just expensive enough. Indeed I've seen them given as such.
  - chiefalchemist 9y ago
    True. But Apple is the proverbial outlier. They are also a perfect example of: Making it look easy...is very very hard. It's to easy to be seduced by (it looks) easy. But Snap won't be the last, will they :)
  - pgm8705 9y ago
    In terms of watch prices it is far from highly priced. I don't know anyone that would considering it "rich people" jewelry. I've had my Apple Watch for several weeks now and its usefulness has made it worth every penny. I especially love having cellular service and not having to take my phone with me everywhere I go.
  - sfifs 9y ago
    Apple watch probably combines function with form in a way that is probably very good value at its price point. I'd certainly consider buying one if only it worked with Android phones. I have airpods that works well with my Android phone that I consider a fantastic value buy.
minimaxir 9y ago
A few months ago on Hacker News I asked about the low usage of the Spectacles and the response was generally that people who bought it liked it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14562560 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14562560 Spectacles are a case where appealing to a niche may not be the most profitable endeavor. (and now that Snap is a public company, they have to actually care about profit at some point)
Fricken 9y ago
I was really curious about spectacles, and bought a pair as soon as I could. I lost them about 3 weeks later, and that was that. In some ways they were really cool, but the article was bang-on about pretty much everything. It's really a case study about how to fuck up a product roll-out. Portability complications were a huge downer. The shaded lenses made them difficult to use indoors, and what wasn't mentioned was that the mic was hypersensitive to distortion from the slightest breeze, which made them useless outside as well. But, as the article states: >To drive demand, Snap needed to demonstrate all the creative things you could do with Spectacles, and the cool people who wore them. Why the fuck didn't they do this?
- DanBC 9y ago
  > and what wasn't mentioned was that the mic was hypersensitive to distortion from the slightest breeze, And you can't really stick a micromuff on your glasses. http://www.micromuff.com/ http://www.micromuff.com/
rch 9y ago
This was obviously a marketing-led disaster from day one. It's hard to accept company leadership that can be be persuaded to do go down a path like this so easily.
koiz 9y ago
Because they were pointless. The first time I saw them I thought to myself, well that's a cool idea but that was it. It truly felt like marketing or some attempt to trick people into believing Snap could make cool things... like a response to Facebook/Oculus.
- baby 9y ago
  If I can use them to shoot videos and make something cool like the japan tour thing[1] I would buy them. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3i5asc3qI4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3i5asc3qI4 EDIT: actually looking at the snapchat spectacle webpage, it looks neat and I can see myself buying them. Just not at that price (130GBP) because I will probably not be using them a lot. But if there is a promotion around Christmas why not.
avip 9y ago
Notably missing from the list - nobody wants this product.
- dawnerd 9y ago
  I dunno, they are/were demoing them at Universal Orlando and plenty of people were checking them out. Price tag probably scared most away (who's dumping 100+ on glasses at a theme park?). I'd buy a pair if they were more like traditional action cam style glasses. The technical limitations right now make them far too expensive for what they are.
  - imroot 9y ago
    You'd be surprised: when I worked in retail, I was told that the sunglass stands in the theme parks were 3 of the the top five grossing stores at the time for the luxury sunglass brand that I was working for. Admittedly, this was...almost 20ish years ago, but, I'd still think this would be true today.
Overtonwindow 9y ago
Just curious, am I the only one who really, really wants the AR glasses from Daemon by Daniel Suarez? I would very much like a pair of glasses that records information, helps me to recognize faces, and bring information further into my reality.
- joering2 9y ago
  For a moment you got me excited thinking that such a thing actually exists, givens today's technology wouldn't be actually rocket science, until I realized its a book :) https://www.amazon.com/DAEMON-Daniel-Suarez/dp/0451228731 https://www.amazon.com/DAEMON-Daniel-Suarez/dp/0451228731
- icebraining 9y ago
  If they could tell you when did you see this person in the past and recognize from your contacts, and if it didn't "sync to cloud" or that crap, I'd buy three just for gifting. Unfortunately, it's just not realistic right now, I think. The Spectacles battery life lasts less than 30 minutes of recording, and they don't even have a screen.
- dbish 9y ago
  Daemon is a great series with interesting tech ideas. That's exactly what i hoped we could be moving towards when i got google glass. Still waiting for something capable.
- josephpmay 9y ago
  I read Daemon in middle school and became so obsessed with augmented reality that I essentially devoted the next seven years of my life to working towards making it happen: attending conferences, conducting research, and starting an AR hardware company. So no, you're not the only one :) Also, unrelated to my previous obsession with AR, I have prosopagnosia, so having glasses that could tell me who I'm looking at would make a major improvement to my life.
  - LambdaComplex 9y ago
    >devoted the next seven years of my life Was that a while ago? Or is that still what you're doing?
thinkloop 9y ago
> Google’s core mistake was allowing geeky developers to become the face of Glass. That's us! We're the mistake :-D
- SapphireSun 9y ago
  I regret the day I was born. :'(
- Redoubts 9y ago
  Wasn't this the same problem with Google+? Facebook started exclusively with college students, Google started a social network exclusively with programmers.
  - SapphireSun 9y ago
    FUCK. I thought that when we attained wealth, power, and appeared on the covers of magazines people would stop dunking our heads in toilets and finally pay us SOME RESPECT. This just shows that our society isn't a meritocracy. It doesn't even matter anymore what you do, we're still undesirables to the cheerleaders and jocks and the popular kids. We'll get our revenge though. We control everything you mfers see, hear, buy, and think. If you look down on us, get ready for your phone to be the new heroin. If you like us, you can be free and dance with us and sample the earthly delights of the real world. We will be Neo, you can elect to be Morpheus or Trinity. Or we can be the machines in zero-one. Maybe that fits better. Enjoy your new paradise losers. /s
thinkloop 9y ago
I wonder if the ultimate answer is for them to be completely imperceptible and indifferentiatable from regular glasses - the glasshole thing is big.
yvsong 9y ago
iGlass will probably be created by Apple or a hardware startup led by some people like Steve Jobs and Woz. No software company has made a hugely successful hardware product.
- cbowal 9y ago
  Microsoft/Xbox?
  - macspoofing 9y ago
    They came close with the 360, and then took 5 steps back with the One.
    - user5994461 9y ago
      Microsoft is a hardware company. They've been shipping computers, keyboards, headsets and all sort of electronics for a while.
  - Retric 9y ago
    XBox seems to be stuck at ~breakeven over the entire lifecycle. They have spent several billion on advertising, they generally sell the console for a direct loss, and it's PS2/3/4 have each sold significantly more each generation. So, IMO it's not hugely successful just not out an outright failure. That said, they have shipped a lot of hardware over time, and made some reasonable profit from mice / keyboards.
- burger_moon 9y ago
  Kindle, Fire, and Echo products seem pretty successful. Same with Pixel and Home. Those come from software companies.
Theodores 9y ago
They took a gamble and it did not work out for them, their product was not the next 'spinner' grade craze. But if you don't try you don't get. It is only a matter of time before cameras in sunglasses becomes a common thing with people using them in place of action cameras, dashcams and regular cameras. The UX needs to be 'wink' to take a picture so these things can operate hands free with voice control - 'cheese' etc. Somehow these wonder sunglasses of the near future weigh no more than normal sunglasses, charge magically in their special case and stream 4K HDR+ 3D stereo over bluetooth 24/7 storing all content on a nano-SD card. But we are not there yet and Snap took a punt at pitching a fun variant of the ideal product with low-res functionality seeing if people would go for it. They didn't. People didn't go crazy for them like they did with 'spinners', an equally 'useless' product. But cameras in sunglasses are happening. People have got over lenses in public. There is one in every car bumper.
vm 9y ago
I was a Snap power user. Got spectacles very early. Hated the upload UX. Bluetooth issues galore. Completely stopped using them. As standalone sunglasses, they are inferior to a good $10 pair from amazon - heavier, worse lens quality, and limited viewable area.
untog 9y ago
I was talking to a parent friend of mine a while back, and we both agreed (he owns a pair) that Snapchat Spectacles could be an amazing accessory for parents. Kids are easily distracted, so if you point a phone at them it'll completely throw them off whatever cute activity it was they were just doing - probably because they now want to play with your phone. No such problem with Spectacles - and not only that, it means you can keep two hands free (not a small issue when one arm might already have a child in it). The problem is that Spectacles are so tied into Snapchat that it makes sharing the output very difficult. Grandma and Grandpa are not going to use Snapchat, and I'm not sure Snapchat wants them to. You can, eventually, import into Snapchat then export single videos back out again, but they lose the cool display method for circular videos and look awful. I think they could shift some of these glasses with a little rebranding and a spin-off app just for importing videos into whatever destination you want. They'll never do that, though. Maybe if they finally declare it dead they'll open up the sync API, but I'm not holding my breath. (this is a repost of an old comment I wrote a few days ago in case anyone is suffering from deja-vu)
- Analemma_ 9y ago
  > Grandma and Grandpa are not going to use Snapchat, and I'm not sure Snapchat wants them to. There's no maybe about it: Snapchat definitely doesn't want them. Evan Spiegel has been very upfront that he doesn't want the riff-raff. Snapchat has always been deliberately shitty on Android and Spiegel went out of his way to make clear how they definitely weren't going to make a Windows Phone application, back when WP was a potential player. If you're not a cool, hip teen with an iPhone, you can piss off. He reminds me a lot of that Abercrombie CEO who said that they didn't want fatties and uglies in their stores, which was a winning strategy until it suddenly wasn't. This is partially why, as much as I hate Facebook, I'm not particularly upset at Snapchat slowly getting steamrolled by them. Businesses that stick up their middle finger at potential customers out of snobbery deserve to fail.
  - jseliger 9y ago
    He reminds me a lot of that Abercrombie CEO who said that they didn't want fatties and uglies in their stores, which was a winning strategy until it suddenly wasn't. To be fair, my impression is that this aspect of their marketing wasn't the problem; the Great Recession was the problem, because suddenly no one had 2 – 4x the money to pay for a piece of clothing that only differed from the competition in that it told other teens you have 2 – 4x the money. Great Recession + fast fashion seems to be the real culprit. The market for elitism has never disappeared in that domain. Maybe any domain.
pix64 9y ago
Never even heard of this
- eddie_catflap 9y ago
  I’d heard of them, didn’t even know they were out yet and today I find they’ve already failed. Ho hum.
sssparkkk 9y ago
So how about this: the influencers on Snapchat are all recording themselves most of the time. These glasses did nothing to help with that particular and most popular use case. I feel really weird for being the first to bring this up, it seems pretty obvious to me the main reason these glasses weren't going to catch on.
- chiefalchemist 9y ago
  Shame I can only upvote this once.
- fezz 9y ago
  Misdirected Narcissism. Never forget who's the star.
- Balgair 9y ago
  I mean, a lot of us felt this way, but yeah, I think you are the first to articulate it. What they actually wanted was something more like the cop drones in the new Blade Runner that hover about and take video in near silence. There are quite a few kickstarters that claim they can do this, but the drones are loud. This generates attention on the drone, not the corporate-shill. Err, sorry, snap-fluencer, my bad. Also, the battery life is terrible and I can see airspace getting crowded at homecoming in the multi-use-room. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sqdr/hexo-your-autonomous-aerial-camera https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sqdr/hexo-your-autonomo... https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/airdog/airdog-worlds-first-auto-follow-action-sports-dron https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/airdog/airdog-worlds-fi...
- AJ007 9y ago
  After I got the spectacles here were the reactions I got, from people in the 21-35 demographic: First, wow I had no idea these existed Second, where can I get them Third, (months later) lost interest Snapchat should have just had a buy now button in the app. Instead they tried to do some guerrilla marketing thing. If you have a captive audience of tens of millions of people, you don't need to create buzz around your product. Either you made something people want or you didn't. Me personally, they hurt my face. So I wore them about twice.
mattbierner 9y ago
Besides their technical and marketing failings, spectacles are also a failure of imagination. They attempt to digitize moments rather than trying to use technology to enhance what you are doing or to create entirely new artificial experiences. I wish this was why they failed but the reasons outlined in the article are much more realistic
lustyHogwash 9y ago
God damn it. These fucking wearable pieces of shit need to stand on their own. They can’t be unrepairable, expensive, tethered pieces of shit that die when the battery refuses to charge. No one wants garbage that only works with one website, and no one wants to pay for an uncontrollable device with a mind of its own. If you have a free service on the internet, millions or perhaps even billions may clamour to use it. If you’re giving stuff out for free, people will happily try it out, if they have the option to throw it in the trash without consequence. Make people pay for something? It better do what they want, when they want it, or you might have some pissed off people on your hands.
- chiefalchemist 9y ago
  In short: Getting people to spend their free time is relatively easy. Getting people to spend their hard earned cash is very (very) difficult. You'd think this would be obvious already :)
IncRnd 9y ago
I can buy a pair of spy glasses for $100 to record at 30fps for an hour in full color 1080, 60fps for half that time. There are no giant lenses on the sides with lights that show my glasses are even capable of recording. I can even order those glasses with a prescription. They will help me see, and nobody else will be the wiser about being recorded. I'm not saying that I go out of my way to discreetly record people - I don't. But that shows to me these commodity glasses are a superior product to cartoonish looking Snapchat Spectacles. For me, that is why Snapchat and all other similar recording spectacles will fail.
- ggg9990 9y ago
  Can you post a link to those spy glasses you mention?
  - IncRnd 9y ago
    There are some similar ones here: http://www.recordergear.com/camera-glasses/ http://www.recordergear.com/camera-glasses/. They aren't exactly the ones I meant, no longer having the manufacturer's link. You can also find a bunch here: https://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=1080p+spy+glasses https://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=1080p+spy+glasses, but at ebay I'd rather spend $100 instead of $12 for these types of things.
endlessvoid94 9y ago
People didn't want them. That's why they failed. It's that simple.
mhh__ 9y ago
Has any wearable succeeded yet? Beyond the obvious ones like earbuds, the smart watch?
- monk_e_boy 9y ago
  I'd not heard of these glasses before, but for action sports they seem like the perfect fit. I kitesurf so I can't hold a camera, I tend to clamp a GoPro between my teeth to film. Same with surfers. If these glasses had waterproof headphones I know tons of people who would snap them sup.
  - mhh__ 9y ago
    If they were cheaper, I might've got some (Or something slightly similar). I like documenting things with video, then deciding what to keep later.
  - nradov 9y ago
    GoPro and third-party vendors sell a bunch of mounting accessories to put on your head or chest or wherever. Why don't you buy one of those instead of holding the camera in your teeth?
- NoPiece 9y ago
  In terms of units, Fitbit has probably been the most successful so far (22m units sold in 2016). They don't get attention in the US, but the Mi Band from Xiaomi isn't far behind.
swang 9y ago
i actually bought one. 1: hard as hell to pair. 2: circular video does not work since a lot of people want to port out the videos away from snapchat. 3: i wear glasses, the lens on these frames are not circular. couldn't find anyone in the bay area who did custom lenses (at the time). 4: towards the end of the year (2016), a lot of people wanted them but were frustrated that even if they got to the vending machine there was zero guarantee they would even get one. at most they had ~70ish in quantity per day. way too low. drove short term hype up though. 5: no marketing at all for this thing.
jVinc 9y ago
This is the very first time I've heard about snapchat spectacles, and I frequently use snapchat... Yea, they failed pretty horribly at doing PR.
Havoc 9y ago
Because it's awkward as fk? Same as google glass. The tech wasn't the issue
Fej 9y ago
Spectacles failed because they wouldn't sell us the damn things! There was all this hype but it was practically impossible to buy a pair except for scalper prices on eBay.
cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
It's amazing how you can write a whole article on this, but the gist is they built something with low utility value. period. If you look at it from this point of view, everything else is just side effect. - It failed because it's not fashionable? => No. See bluetooth headset. Also see Crocs. If it's useful, people will use it. - It failed because it waited 5 months to sell it? => No. See Apple. - It failed because the excitement died off by the time it shipped? => No. See all kinds of films that succeeded WITHOUT any initial hype (such as the Matrix) - It failed because it couldn't get any influencers to endorse the product? => No, see Snapchat. Yeah their original app itself. - It failed because the content couldn't be ported over to other platform without cropping? => No. In fact, if Spectacles would have succeeded, Techcrunch would probably be blabbering about how the key to success is how brilliant its marketing strategy was, so that all the videos uploaded to youtube and instagram had the "signature snapchat crop", which got everyone else curious. The only arguments I agree with in this article are related to its utility--how it's considered rude to be video taping someone else, and how it was limited to sunglasses format. The rest is bullshit because they're one of those "MBA case studies" type after-the-fact interpretation, which in most cases are bullshit. Just go build something useful and you will never have to worry about being "fashionable" or all the gimmicks. In fact as a tech company you should never see yourself as a fashion company. It's a myth created by ignorant media pundits who's never built a product in their life.
- sytelus 9y ago
  Yes, such analysis without data is just BS. I would have liked to see following data: 1. Was snapchat users advertised about this product frequently? If not then its failure in execution right there. 2. What was the conversion rate if they did? 3. Where there any user studies for people who did not convert? What was the distribution of their reasoning? Price, battery life, availability? 4. Was the video/photos uploaded through these glasses carried the advertise for the device itself? 5. What was the influence ratio (friends buying product after one friend bought it)? The thing is that this idea like most ideas was good but execution probably wasn't. The whole trick behind blockbuster product is to understand failure in execution, fix them and reiterate. Never stop after the failure.
evervevdww221 9y ago
I thought it faced a certain and quick death when it was launched. The thing is expensively useless. And the design is very cheesy. Surprisingly, at the time, I saw many articles praising it as "the most brilliant idea", feeling like total flattery. I suspect those were from their marketing team. Guess the market isn't so easy to fool.
cagataygurturk 9y ago
Maybe it‘s because they released sunglasses in November. I don‘t know California but here in developed Europe nobody buys sunglasses nowadays, because there is no sun.
sebringj 9y ago
IMO, (well based on actual data from my websites and apps) most people consume media, not produce it, where producers are < 1%. The phone is a device that both consumes and produces doing a great job at it but for the majority of its use, ~99% , consumes. A device only for producing is already at a disadvantage and its a novel one at that. When glasses or contact lenses both consume and produce, we got something pretty great going on. For example, kind of related, when the iwatch becomes 100% an phone in its own right, no tethering, you already sold me and I'll buy it as it just dramatically increased its utility and its novelty vanished turning into a new form factor.
inthewoods 9y ago
I wonder if they ever tested the concept before the release. To me, they would have seen the issues with any sort of actual market test prior to the investment.
- ImSkeptical 9y ago
  Testing before release is too late. They need to create a dummy mock-up and try it out while they are still brainstorming. If they did that, and were thinking clearly, I expect they would be able to think of a lot of the problems in this thread.
  - inthewoods 9y ago
    Agreed - concept testing.
seambot1 9y ago
Am I the only one that thinks that a) it's obvious that these sorts of devices (face wearables) aren't led by people who have worn glasses their whole life and b) if you haven't lived that, you shouldn't try to build devices for people's faces? I say it's obvious because neither Glass nor Spectacles were wearable by people who need corrective lenses AS corrective eyewear. None of the leadership had any idea what it meant to have a large piece of hardware on your face all day every day. Nor, importantly, how to convince someone to put a large piece of hardware in their face every day all day. It's like they didn't even BOTHER to call the guys at warby Parker, or zenni, or even the anti-christ Luxotica Glasses are SO much more personal than a computer or a phone, or even a shirt or other clothing. They are your face. Your literal identity. It's so tone deaf of both teams (and everyone in the AR/VR community that thinks some manner of out-in-public eyewear is "close) to not deal with that need for customization at minimum. Sorry had to rant about that. M sure all those people are actually pretty sharp, and I'm just being grumpy.
- gaius 9y ago
  I say it's obvious because neither Glass nor Spectacles were wearable by people who need corrective lenses AS corrective eyewear. This reminds me of Canon vs Nikon. Fanboys on the Internet wank on about megapixels and whatnot but the real differentiator is the eyepoint of the viewfinder, which is probably literally as simple as, the eyepoint guy at Nikon wears glasses themselves and their counterpart at Canon doesn't.
  - frankchn 9y ago
    Is there a large difference in viewfinder design nowadays? I wear glasses and use a Canon 1DX2 and have tried out a Nikon D5 — if anything the Canon is more comfortable for me to look through. The specifications bear me out: Nikon has a 0.71x magnification VF with a 17mm eyepoint, while Canon has a 0.76x magnification VF wish 20mm eyepoint.
    - gaius 9y ago
      My experience of this is back in the day when it was a real eye opener if you'll forgive the pun when I switched to a Nikon F5 from a Canon EOS 3. I expect both companies have different viewfinder designers now, but it just goes to show how a simple usability test can be overlooked.
jonahx 9y ago
It's interesting to go back and re-read the overwhelmingly positive predictions HN users made when Spectacles were announced: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12569182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12569182 and compare those to the "it was obviously going to fail" responses here.
- empath75 9y ago
  The only people I ever saw say anything positive about them were people that were pumping the IPO or people they paid to hype them.
  - jonahx 9y ago
    Looking at the profiles of the two top-voted comments in that thread, that doesn't seem to be the case. But just browse the replies: many HN posters genuinely seemed to believe they'd nailed some key niche and important product details. They didn't strike me that way -- which is why I remembered the post. The contrast struck me as an interesting example of hindsight bias.
- TylerE 9y ago
  Is that really surprising? This is, erm, not the most critical audience.
- LordDragonfang 9y ago
  As someone who was looking forward to getting a consumer version of Glass, I get a special schadenfreude looking back at all the articles saying how obvious it was that Spectacles would succeed where Google failed.
lsh123 9y ago
How about: because it was a bad product that nobody needed?
paul7986 9y ago
I think AR sunglasses could be big just needs the right execution. Maybe it only allows you to see things in the real world based on QR codes embedded in real world objects like objects in a museum and other places where businesses, organizations or governments embeds AR qr codes. The heavy computing lifting is done not in the glasses but in the displays. Possibly making the glasses cheap and barely bulkier then current sunglasses. Also this way distribution of such glasses could be like 3D glasses ... pay ticket for museum tour and get Their AR glasses for the tour. A good introduction to AR glasses in the market and other businesses could do the same.
eyeareque 9y ago
I wish they would sell these glasses for $50 USD. they would have no problem clearing out quite a few of them. I can’t see myself paying $100+ on Craigslist let alone the retail price of $129.99 Here’s to hoping they get highly discounted and dumped on eBay/amazon.
Animats 9y ago
They had the application completely wrong. It's not for "social influencers". It's for jocks. People doing extreme sports. Skateboarders. Surfers. They needed to market this as a more convenient GoPro. The trouble is, that's not Snapchat's target demographic. The device concept is fine; it's the seller that's wrong.
- nradov 9y ago
  The device looks too fragile to use in extreme sports and would have to be completely redesigned, especially for compatibility with ski/snowboard goggles. The shape also reduces peripheral vision which is an issue for some sports. I haven't heard many extreme sports athletes complaining that GoPros are inconvenient. The helmet mounts seem fine for most people.
  - Animats 9y ago
    For helmet uses, the GoPro box is not a big problem. Not all sports use helmets.
    - nradov 9y ago
      I see a lot of athletes using chest mounts. For surfing it's common to mount on the tip of the board pointing back at the surfer. I really can't imagine surfers wearing any kind of spectacles; they'd fall off in the first big wipeout.
return0 9y ago
moral of the story: quit hyping things that you know are stupid
_pmf_ 9y ago
Because people don't want to put stupid shit on their face that doen not even have any trace of marginal value. There's no transcendental deeper reason.
Grue3 9y ago
When people were saying that Snapchat is toast after Facebook stole all their functionality, there was always that one person saying that Spectacles will save Snapchat. Which made no sense even back then. Also, before this article, I have never seen a single video shot by Spectacles. And now I understand why: they look terrible. It's not at all like seeing the world from the glasses-wearer's point of view. It's more like looking into a goddamn peephole.
mhomde 9y ago
I think the use case is brilliant, if albeit niche. I would never wear them in everyday life but when travelling I found myself wanting something like this to capture memories, moments or just "atmosphere". A mobile camera doesn't quite cut it because it's hard to get an authentic angle, especially if you're moving. I'd rather not wear glasses when i don't have too but if it's sunny, why not instead of sunglasses? I'd prefer something with less conspicuous branding however, and something I could export in a decent format. I predict this will be a somewhat mainstream gadget within 5 years (Well, for people who can afford it). Apple will make iGlasses, or some shit like that, with Siri and camera. Then there's the whole thing about living in the moment, perhaps that's better :)
djhworld 9y ago
It's a hard sell in countries that don't get that much sun (e.g. UK)
coldtea 9y ago
Because it was a BS idea designed to get some cheap press and PR, and doomed to fail from the start? Google Glass failed for all the technological and social reasons it did, why would a BS subpar imitation from a, in the grand scheme of things, insignificant service, fare better?
malloreon 9y ago
Snapchat is for selfies. you can't take selfies with your own glasses. That's why it failed.
dingo_bat 9y ago
Lol! But guys! Snapchat is a camera company! Interesting how just saying absurd things doesn't make it true.
dingo_bat 9y ago
They should have supported iphone only. And adjusted the projected demand accordingly. It's much easier to make bluetooth peripherals work nicely only with one specific device and specific os. The whole experience would have been much more polished. They could even have used something like airdrop. Iphone users are also more likely to have $150 to spend on a joke pair of glasses. Really seems like the obvious thing to do.
nscalf 9y ago
These failed because they built all of their hype around "we have a truck selling them in random cities for a couple days" and they weren't interesting enough to buy second market. To be honest, I didn't even realize I could buy them now. Their whole thing was that you CAN'T just buy them online. This is the same issue Pokemon Go had---they made a really cool product that would go through a period of super high demand followed by an extreme dropoff, but they didn't roll out their product in time---their release window didn't match the window for the traction they actually generated. Pokemon Go was massive when it released for a couple weeks, and they touted a IoT thing to go with the game that made it even more immersive, but that didn't come out until people really stopped caring. The moral of the story is to know that if you're going to have a huge release, be ready THEN to sell things. Hype is useless if you aren't capitalizing on it.
- nkristoffersen 9y ago
  To be fair, the IoT device wasn't sold by Niantic, it was sold by Nintendo. Nintendo dropped the ball on selling the only thing that was really profitable for them around the Pokemon Go fad since they only receive license fees for the characters I believe.

189 points by alfozan 9y ago

Here is detailed usability and feature function allocation analysis. This product was dead in the water from the beginning. https://www.mauronewmedia.com/blog/snap-spectacles-failed-poor-usability-featurefunction-allocation-errors-compromised-potentially-breakthrough-product/ https://www.mauronewmedia.com/blog/snap-spectacles-failed-po... Mauro Usability Science

adamnemecek 9y ago

TLDR hw is hard, “fashion” hw is double hard

lowmagnet 9y ago
Also, they didn't learn anything from the 'glasshole' phenomenon. The attention span of fishes.
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  I’m guessing they took it into consideration but thought hey could do better.
- Fricken 9y ago
  Glass was released in 2012. For the teenagers that Spectacles was being targeted at, 2012 is ancient history.
  - Camillo 9y ago
    It's ancient history to me, and I'm not even a teenager. I can't believe it was 2012... I would have said 2005 or something. According to Wikipedia, it was actually 2013. Wow.
- hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
  Spectacles may have failed, but on the contrary, I think they made a whole different set of mistakes than Glass: 1. They specifically focused on the fashion-conscious aspect initially (e.g. the Karl Lagerfeld shoot), and purposefully tried to keep the specs away from the nerdy tech press. In the early stages this was actual really successful, and at the very least they got "fashion buzz" when Spectacles came out. 2. They highlighted that Spectacles have a big light go on when recording, which helped blunt some of the "creepiness factor". In fact, I think they did a largely good job of positioning Spectacles as "fun way to take video with friends" as opposed to Glass's "cyborg assistant" approach.
baby 9y ago
It's interesting how on the other side Apple has succeeded with the Apple watch even though you need to recharge it every day. My guess is that it was highly priced and so seen as a "rich people" jewelry. Hence the market being driven by people who want to look rich. I'm sure that if snapchat spectacles had been priced lower, every middle schooler would have gotten them. Driving the market/trend by mass adoption.
- rifung 9y ago
  But isn't the Apple watch useful? I definitely see the appeal of being able to see notifications without having to take out my phone. I don't think it's worth the cost for me, but for those who just enjoy using technology and playing with the newest thing, I can see why you'd want one. Plus, I'm sure they make nice gifts. I don't really buy that they're seen as rich people jewelry. It's less than an iPhone and priced like a budget or fashion brand watch. Of course, this could be my bias showing! To me, the Apple Watch is cheap enough that you'd consider getting one as a gift for someone special, so not show-off expensive but just expensive enough. Indeed I've seen them given as such.
- chiefalchemist 9y ago
  True. But Apple is the proverbial outlier. They are also a perfect example of: Making it look easy...is very very hard. It's to easy to be seduced by (it looks) easy. But Snap won't be the last, will they :)
- pgm8705 9y ago
  In terms of watch prices it is far from highly priced. I don't know anyone that would considering it "rich people" jewelry. I've had my Apple Watch for several weeks now and its usefulness has made it worth every penny. I especially love having cellular service and not having to take my phone with me everywhere I go.
- sfifs 9y ago
  Apple watch probably combines function with form in a way that is probably very good value at its price point. I'd certainly consider buying one if only it worked with Android phones. I have airpods that works well with my Android phone that I consider a fantastic value buy.

minimaxir 9y ago

A few months ago on Hacker News I asked about the low usage of the Spectacles and the response was generally that people who bought it liked it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14562560 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14562560 Spectacles are a case where appealing to a niche may not be the most profitable endeavor. (and now that Snap is a public company, they have to actually care about profit at some point)

Fricken 9y ago

I was really curious about spectacles, and bought a pair as soon as I could. I lost them about 3 weeks later, and that was that. In some ways they were really cool, but the article was bang-on about pretty much everything. It's really a case study about how to fuck up a product roll-out. Portability complications were a huge downer. The shaded lenses made them difficult to use indoors, and what wasn't mentioned was that the mic was hypersensitive to distortion from the slightest breeze, which made them useless outside as well. But, as the article states: >To drive demand, Snap needed to demonstrate all the creative things you could do with Spectacles, and the cool people who wore them. Why the fuck didn't they do this?

DanBC 9y ago
> and what wasn't mentioned was that the mic was hypersensitive to distortion from the slightest breeze, And you can't really stick a micromuff on your glasses. http://www.micromuff.com/ http://www.micromuff.com/

rch 9y ago

This was obviously a marketing-led disaster from day one. It's hard to accept company leadership that can be be persuaded to do go down a path like this so easily.

koiz 9y ago

Because they were pointless. The first time I saw them I thought to myself, well that's a cool idea but that was it. It truly felt like marketing or some attempt to trick people into believing Snap could make cool things... like a response to Facebook/Oculus.

baby 9y ago
If I can use them to shoot videos and make something cool like the japan tour thing[1] I would buy them. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3i5asc3qI4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3i5asc3qI4 EDIT: actually looking at the snapchat spectacle webpage, it looks neat and I can see myself buying them. Just not at that price (130GBP) because I will probably not be using them a lot. But if there is a promotion around Christmas why not.

avip 9y ago

Notably missing from the list - nobody wants this product.

dawnerd 9y ago
I dunno, they are/were demoing them at Universal Orlando and plenty of people were checking them out. Price tag probably scared most away (who's dumping 100+ on glasses at a theme park?). I'd buy a pair if they were more like traditional action cam style glasses. The technical limitations right now make them far too expensive for what they are.
- imroot 9y ago
  You'd be surprised: when I worked in retail, I was told that the sunglass stands in the theme parks were 3 of the the top five grossing stores at the time for the luxury sunglass brand that I was working for. Admittedly, this was...almost 20ish years ago, but, I'd still think this would be true today.

Overtonwindow 9y ago

Just curious, am I the only one who really, really wants the AR glasses from Daemon by Daniel Suarez? I would very much like a pair of glasses that records information, helps me to recognize faces, and bring information further into my reality.

joering2 9y ago
For a moment you got me excited thinking that such a thing actually exists, givens today's technology wouldn't be actually rocket science, until I realized its a book :) https://www.amazon.com/DAEMON-Daniel-Suarez/dp/0451228731 https://www.amazon.com/DAEMON-Daniel-Suarez/dp/0451228731
icebraining 9y ago
If they could tell you when did you see this person in the past and recognize from your contacts, and if it didn't "sync to cloud" or that crap, I'd buy three just for gifting. Unfortunately, it's just not realistic right now, I think. The Spectacles battery life lasts less than 30 minutes of recording, and they don't even have a screen.
dbish 9y ago
Daemon is a great series with interesting tech ideas. That's exactly what i hoped we could be moving towards when i got google glass. Still waiting for something capable.
josephpmay 9y ago
I read Daemon in middle school and became so obsessed with augmented reality that I essentially devoted the next seven years of my life to working towards making it happen: attending conferences, conducting research, and starting an AR hardware company. So no, you're not the only one :) Also, unrelated to my previous obsession with AR, I have prosopagnosia, so having glasses that could tell me who I'm looking at would make a major improvement to my life.
- LambdaComplex 9y ago
  >devoted the next seven years of my life Was that a while ago? Or is that still what you're doing?

thinkloop 9y ago

> Google’s core mistake was allowing geeky developers to become the face of Glass. That's us! We're the mistake :-D

SapphireSun 9y ago
I regret the day I was born. :'(
Redoubts 9y ago
Wasn't this the same problem with Google+? Facebook started exclusively with college students, Google started a social network exclusively with programmers.
- SapphireSun 9y ago
  FUCK. I thought that when we attained wealth, power, and appeared on the covers of magazines people would stop dunking our heads in toilets and finally pay us SOME RESPECT. This just shows that our society isn't a meritocracy. It doesn't even matter anymore what you do, we're still undesirables to the cheerleaders and jocks and the popular kids. We'll get our revenge though. We control everything you mfers see, hear, buy, and think. If you look down on us, get ready for your phone to be the new heroin. If you like us, you can be free and dance with us and sample the earthly delights of the real world. We will be Neo, you can elect to be Morpheus or Trinity. Or we can be the machines in zero-one. Maybe that fits better. Enjoy your new paradise losers. /s

thinkloop 9y ago

I wonder if the ultimate answer is for them to be completely imperceptible and indifferentiatable from regular glasses - the glasshole thing is big.

yvsong 9y ago

iGlass will probably be created by Apple or a hardware startup led by some people like Steve Jobs and Woz. No software company has made a hugely successful hardware product.

cbowal 9y ago
Microsoft/Xbox?
- macspoofing 9y ago
  They came close with the 360, and then took 5 steps back with the One.
  - user5994461 9y ago
    Microsoft is a hardware company. They've been shipping computers, keyboards, headsets and all sort of electronics for a while.
- Retric 9y ago
  XBox seems to be stuck at ~breakeven over the entire lifecycle. They have spent several billion on advertising, they generally sell the console for a direct loss, and it's PS2/3/4 have each sold significantly more each generation. So, IMO it's not hugely successful just not out an outright failure. That said, they have shipped a lot of hardware over time, and made some reasonable profit from mice / keyboards.
burger_moon 9y ago
Kindle, Fire, and Echo products seem pretty successful. Same with Pixel and Home. Those come from software companies.

Theodores 9y ago

They took a gamble and it did not work out for them, their product was not the next 'spinner' grade craze. But if you don't try you don't get. It is only a matter of time before cameras in sunglasses becomes a common thing with people using them in place of action cameras, dashcams and regular cameras. The UX needs to be 'wink' to take a picture so these things can operate hands free with voice control - 'cheese' etc. Somehow these wonder sunglasses of the near future weigh no more than normal sunglasses, charge magically in their special case and stream 4K HDR+ 3D stereo over bluetooth 24/7 storing all content on a nano-SD card. But we are not there yet and Snap took a punt at pitching a fun variant of the ideal product with low-res functionality seeing if people would go for it. They didn't. People didn't go crazy for them like they did with 'spinners', an equally 'useless' product. But cameras in sunglasses are happening. People have got over lenses in public. There is one in every car bumper.

vm 9y ago

I was a Snap power user. Got spectacles very early. Hated the upload UX. Bluetooth issues galore. Completely stopped using them. As standalone sunglasses, they are inferior to a good $10 pair from amazon - heavier, worse lens quality, and limited viewable area.

untog 9y ago

I was talking to a parent friend of mine a while back, and we both agreed (he owns a pair) that Snapchat Spectacles could be an amazing accessory for parents. Kids are easily distracted, so if you point a phone at them it'll completely throw them off whatever cute activity it was they were just doing - probably because they now want to play with your phone. No such problem with Spectacles - and not only that, it means you can keep two hands free (not a small issue when one arm might already have a child in it). The problem is that Spectacles are so tied into Snapchat that it makes sharing the output very difficult. Grandma and Grandpa are not going to use Snapchat, and I'm not sure Snapchat wants them to. You can, eventually, import into Snapchat then export single videos back out again, but they lose the cool display method for circular videos and look awful. I think they could shift some of these glasses with a little rebranding and a spin-off app just for importing videos into whatever destination you want. They'll never do that, though. Maybe if they finally declare it dead they'll open up the sync API, but I'm not holding my breath. (this is a repost of an old comment I wrote a few days ago in case anyone is suffering from deja-vu)

Analemma_ 9y ago
> Grandma and Grandpa are not going to use Snapchat, and I'm not sure Snapchat wants them to. There's no maybe about it: Snapchat definitely doesn't want them. Evan Spiegel has been very upfront that he doesn't want the riff-raff. Snapchat has always been deliberately shitty on Android and Spiegel went out of his way to make clear how they definitely weren't going to make a Windows Phone application, back when WP was a potential player. If you're not a cool, hip teen with an iPhone, you can piss off. He reminds me a lot of that Abercrombie CEO who said that they didn't want fatties and uglies in their stores, which was a winning strategy until it suddenly wasn't. This is partially why, as much as I hate Facebook, I'm not particularly upset at Snapchat slowly getting steamrolled by them. Businesses that stick up their middle finger at potential customers out of snobbery deserve to fail.
- jseliger 9y ago
  He reminds me a lot of that Abercrombie CEO who said that they didn't want fatties and uglies in their stores, which was a winning strategy until it suddenly wasn't. To be fair, my impression is that this aspect of their marketing wasn't the problem; the Great Recession was the problem, because suddenly no one had 2 – 4x the money to pay for a piece of clothing that only differed from the competition in that it told other teens you have 2 – 4x the money. Great Recession + fast fashion seems to be the real culprit. The market for elitism has never disappeared in that domain. Maybe any domain.

pix64 9y ago

Never even heard of this

eddie_catflap 9y ago
I’d heard of them, didn’t even know they were out yet and today I find they’ve already failed. Ho hum.

sssparkkk 9y ago

So how about this: the influencers on Snapchat are all recording themselves most of the time. These glasses did nothing to help with that particular and most popular use case. I feel really weird for being the first to bring this up, it seems pretty obvious to me the main reason these glasses weren't going to catch on.

chiefalchemist 9y ago
Shame I can only upvote this once.
fezz 9y ago
Misdirected Narcissism. Never forget who's the star.
Balgair 9y ago
I mean, a lot of us felt this way, but yeah, I think you are the first to articulate it. What they actually wanted was something more like the cop drones in the new Blade Runner that hover about and take video in near silence. There are quite a few kickstarters that claim they can do this, but the drones are loud. This generates attention on the drone, not the corporate-shill. Err, sorry, snap-fluencer, my bad. Also, the battery life is terrible and I can see airspace getting crowded at homecoming in the multi-use-room. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sqdr/hexo-your-autonomous-aerial-camera https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sqdr/hexo-your-autonomo... https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/airdog/airdog-worlds-first-auto-follow-action-sports-dron https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/airdog/airdog-worlds-fi...
AJ007 9y ago
After I got the spectacles here were the reactions I got, from people in the 21-35 demographic: First, wow I had no idea these existed Second, where can I get them Third, (months later) lost interest Snapchat should have just had a buy now button in the app. Instead they tried to do some guerrilla marketing thing. If you have a captive audience of tens of millions of people, you don't need to create buzz around your product. Either you made something people want or you didn't. Me personally, they hurt my face. So I wore them about twice.

mattbierner 9y ago

Besides their technical and marketing failings, spectacles are also a failure of imagination. They attempt to digitize moments rather than trying to use technology to enhance what you are doing or to create entirely new artificial experiences. I wish this was why they failed but the reasons outlined in the article are much more realistic

lustyHogwash 9y ago

God damn it. These fucking wearable pieces of shit need to stand on their own. They can’t be unrepairable, expensive, tethered pieces of shit that die when the battery refuses to charge. No one wants garbage that only works with one website, and no one wants to pay for an uncontrollable device with a mind of its own. If you have a free service on the internet, millions or perhaps even billions may clamour to use it. If you’re giving stuff out for free, people will happily try it out, if they have the option to throw it in the trash without consequence. Make people pay for something? It better do what they want, when they want it, or you might have some pissed off people on your hands.

chiefalchemist 9y ago
In short: Getting people to spend their free time is relatively easy. Getting people to spend their hard earned cash is very (very) difficult. You'd think this would be obvious already :)

IncRnd 9y ago

I can buy a pair of spy glasses for $100 to record at 30fps for an hour in full color 1080, 60fps for half that time. There are no giant lenses on the sides with lights that show my glasses are even capable of recording. I can even order those glasses with a prescription. They will help me see, and nobody else will be the wiser about being recorded. I'm not saying that I go out of my way to discreetly record people - I don't. But that shows to me these commodity glasses are a superior product to cartoonish looking Snapchat Spectacles. For me, that is why Snapchat and all other similar recording spectacles will fail.

ggg9990 9y ago
Can you post a link to those spy glasses you mention?
- IncRnd 9y ago
  There are some similar ones here: http://www.recordergear.com/camera-glasses/ http://www.recordergear.com/camera-glasses/. They aren't exactly the ones I meant, no longer having the manufacturer's link. You can also find a bunch here: https://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=1080p+spy+glasses https://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=1080p+spy+glasses, but at ebay I'd rather spend $100 instead of $12 for these types of things.

endlessvoid94 9y ago

People didn't want them. That's why they failed. It's that simple.

mhh__ 9y ago

Has any wearable succeeded yet? Beyond the obvious ones like earbuds, the smart watch?

monk_e_boy 9y ago
I'd not heard of these glasses before, but for action sports they seem like the perfect fit. I kitesurf so I can't hold a camera, I tend to clamp a GoPro between my teeth to film. Same with surfers. If these glasses had waterproof headphones I know tons of people who would snap them sup.
- mhh__ 9y ago
  If they were cheaper, I might've got some (Or something slightly similar). I like documenting things with video, then deciding what to keep later.
- nradov 9y ago
  GoPro and third-party vendors sell a bunch of mounting accessories to put on your head or chest or wherever. Why don't you buy one of those instead of holding the camera in your teeth?
NoPiece 9y ago
In terms of units, Fitbit has probably been the most successful so far (22m units sold in 2016). They don't get attention in the US, but the Mi Band from Xiaomi isn't far behind.

swang 9y ago

i actually bought one. 1: hard as hell to pair. 2: circular video does not work since a lot of people want to port out the videos away from snapchat. 3: i wear glasses, the lens on these frames are not circular. couldn't find anyone in the bay area who did custom lenses (at the time). 4: towards the end of the year (2016), a lot of people wanted them but were frustrated that even if they got to the vending machine there was zero guarantee they would even get one. at most they had ~70ish in quantity per day. way too low. drove short term hype up though. 5: no marketing at all for this thing.

jVinc 9y ago

This is the very first time I've heard about snapchat spectacles, and I frequently use snapchat... Yea, they failed pretty horribly at doing PR.

Havoc 9y ago

Because it's awkward as fk? Same as google glass. The tech wasn't the issue

Fej 9y ago

Spectacles failed because they wouldn't sell us the damn things! There was all this hype but it was practically impossible to buy a pair except for scalper prices on eBay.

cocktailpeanuts 9y ago

It's amazing how you can write a whole article on this, but the gist is they built something with low utility value. period. If you look at it from this point of view, everything else is just side effect. - It failed because it's not fashionable? => No. See bluetooth headset. Also see Crocs. If it's useful, people will use it. - It failed because it waited 5 months to sell it? => No. See Apple. - It failed because the excitement died off by the time it shipped? => No. See all kinds of films that succeeded WITHOUT any initial hype (such as the Matrix) - It failed because it couldn't get any influencers to endorse the product? => No, see Snapchat. Yeah their original app itself. - It failed because the content couldn't be ported over to other platform without cropping? => No. In fact, if Spectacles would have succeeded, Techcrunch would probably be blabbering about how the key to success is how brilliant its marketing strategy was, so that all the videos uploaded to youtube and instagram had the "signature snapchat crop", which got everyone else curious. The only arguments I agree with in this article are related to its utility--how it's considered rude to be video taping someone else, and how it was limited to sunglasses format. The rest is bullshit because they're one of those "MBA case studies" type after-the-fact interpretation, which in most cases are bullshit. Just go build something useful and you will never have to worry about being "fashionable" or all the gimmicks. In fact as a tech company you should never see yourself as a fashion company. It's a myth created by ignorant media pundits who's never built a product in their life.

sytelus 9y ago
Yes, such analysis without data is just BS. I would have liked to see following data: 1. Was snapchat users advertised about this product frequently? If not then its failure in execution right there. 2. What was the conversion rate if they did? 3. Where there any user studies for people who did not convert? What was the distribution of their reasoning? Price, battery life, availability? 4. Was the video/photos uploaded through these glasses carried the advertise for the device itself? 5. What was the influence ratio (friends buying product after one friend bought it)? The thing is that this idea like most ideas was good but execution probably wasn't. The whole trick behind blockbuster product is to understand failure in execution, fix them and reiterate. Never stop after the failure.

evervevdww221 9y ago

I thought it faced a certain and quick death when it was launched. The thing is expensively useless. And the design is very cheesy. Surprisingly, at the time, I saw many articles praising it as "the most brilliant idea", feeling like total flattery. I suspect those were from their marketing team. Guess the market isn't so easy to fool.

cagataygurturk 9y ago

Maybe it‘s because they released sunglasses in November. I don‘t know California but here in developed Europe nobody buys sunglasses nowadays, because there is no sun.

sebringj 9y ago

IMO, (well based on actual data from my websites and apps) most people consume media, not produce it, where producers are < 1%. The phone is a device that both consumes and produces doing a great job at it but for the majority of its use, ~99% , consumes. A device only for producing is already at a disadvantage and its a novel one at that. When glasses or contact lenses both consume and produce, we got something pretty great going on. For example, kind of related, when the iwatch becomes 100% an phone in its own right, no tethering, you already sold me and I'll buy it as it just dramatically increased its utility and its novelty vanished turning into a new form factor.

inthewoods 9y ago

I wonder if they ever tested the concept before the release. To me, they would have seen the issues with any sort of actual market test prior to the investment.

ImSkeptical 9y ago
Testing before release is too late. They need to create a dummy mock-up and try it out while they are still brainstorming. If they did that, and were thinking clearly, I expect they would be able to think of a lot of the problems in this thread.
- inthewoods 9y ago
  Agreed - concept testing.

seambot1 9y ago

Am I the only one that thinks that a) it's obvious that these sorts of devices (face wearables) aren't led by people who have worn glasses their whole life and b) if you haven't lived that, you shouldn't try to build devices for people's faces? I say it's obvious because neither Glass nor Spectacles were wearable by people who need corrective lenses AS corrective eyewear. None of the leadership had any idea what it meant to have a large piece of hardware on your face all day every day. Nor, importantly, how to convince someone to put a large piece of hardware in their face every day all day. It's like they didn't even BOTHER to call the guys at warby Parker, or zenni, or even the anti-christ Luxotica Glasses are SO much more personal than a computer or a phone, or even a shirt or other clothing. They are your face. Your literal identity. It's so tone deaf of both teams (and everyone in the AR/VR community that thinks some manner of out-in-public eyewear is "close) to not deal with that need for customization at minimum. Sorry had to rant about that. M sure all those people are actually pretty sharp, and I'm just being grumpy.

gaius 9y ago
I say it's obvious because neither Glass nor Spectacles were wearable by people who need corrective lenses AS corrective eyewear. This reminds me of Canon vs Nikon. Fanboys on the Internet wank on about megapixels and whatnot but the real differentiator is the eyepoint of the viewfinder, which is probably literally as simple as, the eyepoint guy at Nikon wears glasses themselves and their counterpart at Canon doesn't.
- frankchn 9y ago
  Is there a large difference in viewfinder design nowadays? I wear glasses and use a Canon 1DX2 and have tried out a Nikon D5 — if anything the Canon is more comfortable for me to look through. The specifications bear me out: Nikon has a 0.71x magnification VF with a 17mm eyepoint, while Canon has a 0.76x magnification VF wish 20mm eyepoint.
  - gaius 9y ago
    My experience of this is back in the day when it was a real eye opener if you'll forgive the pun when I switched to a Nikon F5 from a Canon EOS 3. I expect both companies have different viewfinder designers now, but it just goes to show how a simple usability test can be overlooked.

jonahx 9y ago

It's interesting to go back and re-read the overwhelmingly positive predictions HN users made when Spectacles were announced: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12569182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12569182 and compare those to the "it was obviously going to fail" responses here.

empath75 9y ago
The only people I ever saw say anything positive about them were people that were pumping the IPO or people they paid to hype them.
- jonahx 9y ago
  Looking at the profiles of the two top-voted comments in that thread, that doesn't seem to be the case. But just browse the replies: many HN posters genuinely seemed to believe they'd nailed some key niche and important product details. They didn't strike me that way -- which is why I remembered the post. The contrast struck me as an interesting example of hindsight bias.
TylerE 9y ago
Is that really surprising? This is, erm, not the most critical audience.
LordDragonfang 9y ago
As someone who was looking forward to getting a consumer version of Glass, I get a special schadenfreude looking back at all the articles saying how obvious it was that Spectacles would succeed where Google failed.

lsh123 9y ago

How about: because it was a bad product that nobody needed?

paul7986 9y ago

I think AR sunglasses could be big just needs the right execution. Maybe it only allows you to see things in the real world based on QR codes embedded in real world objects like objects in a museum and other places where businesses, organizations or governments embeds AR qr codes. The heavy computing lifting is done not in the glasses but in the displays. Possibly making the glasses cheap and barely bulkier then current sunglasses. Also this way distribution of such glasses could be like 3D glasses ... pay ticket for museum tour and get Their AR glasses for the tour. A good introduction to AR glasses in the market and other businesses could do the same.

eyeareque 9y ago

I wish they would sell these glasses for $50 USD. they would have no problem clearing out quite a few of them. I can’t see myself paying $100+ on Craigslist let alone the retail price of $129.99 Here’s to hoping they get highly discounted and dumped on eBay/amazon.

Animats 9y ago

They had the application completely wrong. It's not for "social influencers". It's for jocks. People doing extreme sports. Skateboarders. Surfers. They needed to market this as a more convenient GoPro. The trouble is, that's not Snapchat's target demographic. The device concept is fine; it's the seller that's wrong.

nradov 9y ago
The device looks too fragile to use in extreme sports and would have to be completely redesigned, especially for compatibility with ski/snowboard goggles. The shape also reduces peripheral vision which is an issue for some sports. I haven't heard many extreme sports athletes complaining that GoPros are inconvenient. The helmet mounts seem fine for most people.
- Animats 9y ago
  For helmet uses, the GoPro box is not a big problem. Not all sports use helmets.
  - nradov 9y ago
    I see a lot of athletes using chest mounts. For surfing it's common to mount on the tip of the board pointing back at the surfer. I really can't imagine surfers wearing any kind of spectacles; they'd fall off in the first big wipeout.

return0 9y ago

moral of the story: quit hyping things that you know are stupid

_pmf_ 9y ago

Because people don't want to put stupid shit on their face that doen not even have any trace of marginal value. There's no transcendental deeper reason.

Grue3 9y ago

When people were saying that Snapchat is toast after Facebook stole all their functionality, there was always that one person saying that Spectacles will save Snapchat. Which made no sense even back then. Also, before this article, I have never seen a single video shot by Spectacles. And now I understand why: they look terrible. It's not at all like seeing the world from the glasses-wearer's point of view. It's more like looking into a goddamn peephole.

mhomde 9y ago

I think the use case is brilliant, if albeit niche. I would never wear them in everyday life but when travelling I found myself wanting something like this to capture memories, moments or just "atmosphere". A mobile camera doesn't quite cut it because it's hard to get an authentic angle, especially if you're moving. I'd rather not wear glasses when i don't have too but if it's sunny, why not instead of sunglasses? I'd prefer something with less conspicuous branding however, and something I could export in a decent format. I predict this will be a somewhat mainstream gadget within 5 years (Well, for people who can afford it). Apple will make iGlasses, or some shit like that, with Siri and camera. Then there's the whole thing about living in the moment, perhaps that's better :)

djhworld 9y ago

It's a hard sell in countries that don't get that much sun (e.g. UK)

coldtea 9y ago

Because it was a BS idea designed to get some cheap press and PR, and doomed to fail from the start? Google Glass failed for all the technological and social reasons it did, why would a BS subpar imitation from a, in the grand scheme of things, insignificant service, fare better?

malloreon 9y ago

Snapchat is for selfies. you can't take selfies with your own glasses. That's why it failed.

dingo_bat 9y ago

Lol! But guys! Snapchat is a camera company! Interesting how just saying absurd things doesn't make it true.

dingo_bat 9y ago

They should have supported iphone only. And adjusted the projected demand accordingly. It's much easier to make bluetooth peripherals work nicely only with one specific device and specific os. The whole experience would have been much more polished. They could even have used something like airdrop. Iphone users are also more likely to have $150 to spend on a joke pair of glasses. Really seems like the obvious thing to do.

nscalf 9y ago

These failed because they built all of their hype around "we have a truck selling them in random cities for a couple days" and they weren't interesting enough to buy second market. To be honest, I didn't even realize I could buy them now. Their whole thing was that you CAN'T just buy them online. This is the same issue Pokemon Go had---they made a really cool product that would go through a period of super high demand followed by an extreme dropoff, but they didn't roll out their product in time---their release window didn't match the window for the traction they actually generated. Pokemon Go was massive when it released for a couple weeks, and they touted a IoT thing to go with the game that made it even more immersive, but that didn't come out until people really stopped caring. The moral of the story is to know that if you're going to have a huge release, be ready THEN to sell things. Hype is useless if you aren't capitalizing on it.

nkristoffersen 9y ago
To be fair, the IoT device wasn't sold by Niantic, it was sold by Nintendo. Nintendo dropped the ball on selling the only thing that was really profitable for them around the Pokemon Go fad since they only receive license fees for the characters I believe.