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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

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.
- asperous 9y ago
  As a snapchat user/owner of specs 1. Kind of/yes. They had campaigns at certain times. 2. Low 3. idk 4. Yes, they did. It would say "taken with spectacles" and the format kind of advertized/demonstrated the product 5. No one I know besides me bought one. The problem is no one cares about snapchat that much. The average user isn't taking it so seriously that they want to spend money on hardware like this, let alone charge it, set it up, take it around with them etc. If snapchat charged $0.10 to continue using it half their userbase might just uninstall.
chrischen 9y ago
I got the spectacles and as sunglasses they wre pretty low quality. They only have one size, which doesn’t fit my head well, and the hinges get too loose after just a few days.
icelancer 9y ago
>>but the gist is they built something with low utility value. period Yep. Today we live in times where apparently this is secondary, however, so they gotta make up a ton of crap. A friend has a pair. They work... fine. The app support is... fine, and kind of novel actually given that rotation on the screen works with snaps shot with spectacles only. But... there's not much value there. At all. And why would there be, anyway?
- taneq 9y ago
  Sounds like the world's okayest product. No wonder it garnered so much apathy.
janekm 9y ago
While you're right that if they had built something with "high utility value", they could have succeeded despite these points, for a pure gimmick that anyone would have only bought ought of curiosity, they failed to capitalise on the sales they could have made in the early period of significant media attention they got. Gimmicks like that (tamagotchi, fidget spinner, yoyo) have a limited shelf life. That's kind of the genius of many Kickstarters... Gimmicks that noone would buy after careful consideration can sell a decent number of units at "peak hype".
nopinsight 9y ago
My general theory is that: P(Success) is highly correlated with (Marginal Value / Marginal Cost) The original Snapchat app succeeded because the marginal cost is low (everyone already has a smartphone) and it provides a good marginal value to a subset of population (over other social networks). Spectacles carry higher monetary and more importantly convenience and social costs to use and add little extra value beyond existing solutions. The same framework could be applied to Uber, AirBnb, ... as well as many startup failures. Note that P(Success) or probability of success implies that there are factors other than those included in the model. I’d love to have refinements or counterexamples to the model if anyone is interested.
- candiodari 9y ago
  I don't know. There must be more factors. How else would you explain the success of companies like Apple, Tesla and Xiaomi. Or for that matter, to a certain extent every luxury product. Marginal Value, MV(iPhone) ~= MV(crap, and most non-crap, android phones) (granted, this is probably not true for the original iPhone). But except for that one time it is certainly not true. The quality is clearly different, however. Even more clear is the Tesla case: MV(Roadster) <<< MV(alternatives). It wasn't the best electric car, it wasn't the best car, it wasn't ... however again there was a clear difference in quality. I would argue most real estate developments are equally examples of this (mostly because laws prevent them on competing on anything other than quality in most inner cities). Trump's whole empire seems an example of it too. It seems to be entirely possible to achieve success by simply copying a badly executed idea, and doing it better.
  - nopinsight 9y ago
    Mobile phones and cars are used in public and many people associate their personal identity with them. Here are the key values I believe are provided by each of your example: iPhone: signifier of good taste, ease of use (relative to Android), being well-off (in developing countries) Xiaomi: middle class or upper-middle class status (in China), good value for money I agree that current iPhones and Xiaomi phones do not provide much better features relative to their competition (no-name Android phones in the case of Xiaomi). Their values lie elsewhere. Tesla Roadster: cutting-edge, environmental sensibility In fact, by sales volume, Roadster itself was not a success. Tesla only sold 2,450 of them in 30 countries [1]. Model S provides much better value for cost and correspondingly achieved much stronger success. Luxury products in general tend to be associated with social exposure. Maybe luxury mobs or floor cleaning liquid exist but either they do provide some special features for a niche or their sales volumes are relatively tiny. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster
ulfw 9y ago
I absolutely agree with you. It’s plain and simple. They failed because they were useless. Like Silicon Valley builds a lot of products out of a perceived need of their local area, which often doesn’t translate into worldwide product need, Snap built something for the Venice hippster cool-kid crowd. Huge where Snap is located. Tiny globally really.
- eradicatethots 9y ago
  There are lots of successful but useless or nearly useless products. This is a nearly useless fashion product, but really it’s just something you’d buy for fun. Most fashion products are in that territory.
saimiam 9y ago
I disagree with your entire comment and here’s why - in my view, saying that the reason something failed because it relieved no itch or there was insufficient utility is at par with suggesting that trading is simple because you have to “Buy Low and Sell High, d’oh”. It teaches no one anything they don’t instinctively know. Everything the article says - be it about influencers not picking up and promoting the Spectacles to difficulties with porting content without cropping - is extremely useful to anyone else looking to launch a Spectacles type device.
- bambax 9y ago
  Of course it would be tautological to say "what's useful is useful" but that's not what the parent is saying. The parent is saying that usefulness is the main, if not only, cause of success, and that other factors are in fact irrelevant (namely, fashionableness, launch strategy, celebrity endorsements, etc.) You can agree or disagree with that thesis, but here you're misrepresenting it.
  - saimiam 9y ago
    “Usefulness” is not a metric that can measured or sought in isolation. Usefulness needs an actor trying to perform an action desiring a result. When OP says something failed because it isn’t useful, they are deliberately ignoring the subject and object of the equation. When the article says that influencers didn’t glom on to Spectacles, they are making a statement about influencers not finding it useful but if you read the parent comment, this observation is useless because it obfuscates the true problem - that Spectacles is “useless”.
- rootlocus 9y ago
  > is extremely useful to anyone else looking to launch a Spectacles type device. Earth has limited resources. I wish people wouldn't feel the need to buy / produce hypster "Spectacles type devices".
- jasode 9y ago
  >Everything the article says - [...] - is extremely useful to anyone else The post you replied to tried to explain why it's actually not useful. The journalist uses a style of seductive writing (some call it "narrative fallacy"[1]) which connects plausible-sounding causes to its supposedly logical effects. That style of explanation can actually make readers dumber about what happened because it leaves out counterexamples. That "narrative fallacy" is common in writings from Harvard Business Review, histories, biographies, newspapers & pundits trying to explain why the Dow Jones Index went up/down, why startups/products failed/succeeded, etc. All of those suffer the omission of counterexamples. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayden_White https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayden_White
__m 9y ago
Sure, you'll get some people to wear it, see whitemenwearinggoogleglass at tumblr, but ignoring fashion in wearables is just inviting competitors to put you out of business. Please don't wear crocs in public.
bedhead 9y ago
They are worse than useless: they are lame. I won’t define that. It’s like Potter Stewart - I know it when I see it.
snarf21 9y ago
I also don't think they "failed". I think it was all about positioning the company as "not just a teen social app" to help with the IPO. The pitch is Snap is really a camera/picture/video company that happens to have a popular social media app.
pvg 9y ago
WITHOUT any initial hype (such as the Matrix) The Matrix's promotion campaign included a Super Bowl ad.
- cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
  ad isn't hype
  - pvg 9y ago
    So the movie had a huge promotional campaign and nobody noticed or cared? It made $28 million on its opening weekend, 16% of its US gross. This isn't some unknown movie that built up in popularity as word about it spread around.

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.

asperous 9y ago
As a snapchat user/owner of specs 1. Kind of/yes. They had campaigns at certain times. 2. Low 3. idk 4. Yes, they did. It would say "taken with spectacles" and the format kind of advertized/demonstrated the product 5. No one I know besides me bought one. The problem is no one cares about snapchat that much. The average user isn't taking it so seriously that they want to spend money on hardware like this, let alone charge it, set it up, take it around with them etc. If snapchat charged $0.10 to continue using it half their userbase might just uninstall.

chrischen 9y ago

I got the spectacles and as sunglasses they wre pretty low quality. They only have one size, which doesn’t fit my head well, and the hinges get too loose after just a few days.

icelancer 9y ago

>>but the gist is they built something with low utility value. period Yep. Today we live in times where apparently this is secondary, however, so they gotta make up a ton of crap. A friend has a pair. They work... fine. The app support is... fine, and kind of novel actually given that rotation on the screen works with snaps shot with spectacles only. But... there's not much value there. At all. And why would there be, anyway?

taneq 9y ago
Sounds like the world's okayest product. No wonder it garnered so much apathy.

janekm 9y ago

While you're right that if they had built something with "high utility value", they could have succeeded despite these points, for a pure gimmick that anyone would have only bought ought of curiosity, they failed to capitalise on the sales they could have made in the early period of significant media attention they got. Gimmicks like that (tamagotchi, fidget spinner, yoyo) have a limited shelf life. That's kind of the genius of many Kickstarters... Gimmicks that noone would buy after careful consideration can sell a decent number of units at "peak hype".

nopinsight 9y ago

My general theory is that: P(Success) is highly correlated with (Marginal Value / Marginal Cost) The original Snapchat app succeeded because the marginal cost is low (everyone already has a smartphone) and it provides a good marginal value to a subset of population (over other social networks). Spectacles carry higher monetary and more importantly convenience and social costs to use and add little extra value beyond existing solutions. The same framework could be applied to Uber, AirBnb, ... as well as many startup failures. Note that P(Success) or probability of success implies that there are factors other than those included in the model. I’d love to have refinements or counterexamples to the model if anyone is interested.

candiodari 9y ago
I don't know. There must be more factors. How else would you explain the success of companies like Apple, Tesla and Xiaomi. Or for that matter, to a certain extent every luxury product. Marginal Value, MV(iPhone) ~= MV(crap, and most non-crap, android phones) (granted, this is probably not true for the original iPhone). But except for that one time it is certainly not true. The quality is clearly different, however. Even more clear is the Tesla case: MV(Roadster) <<< MV(alternatives). It wasn't the best electric car, it wasn't the best car, it wasn't ... however again there was a clear difference in quality. I would argue most real estate developments are equally examples of this (mostly because laws prevent them on competing on anything other than quality in most inner cities). Trump's whole empire seems an example of it too. It seems to be entirely possible to achieve success by simply copying a badly executed idea, and doing it better.
- nopinsight 9y ago
  Mobile phones and cars are used in public and many people associate their personal identity with them. Here are the key values I believe are provided by each of your example: iPhone: signifier of good taste, ease of use (relative to Android), being well-off (in developing countries) Xiaomi: middle class or upper-middle class status (in China), good value for money I agree that current iPhones and Xiaomi phones do not provide much better features relative to their competition (no-name Android phones in the case of Xiaomi). Their values lie elsewhere. Tesla Roadster: cutting-edge, environmental sensibility In fact, by sales volume, Roadster itself was not a success. Tesla only sold 2,450 of them in 30 countries [1]. Model S provides much better value for cost and correspondingly achieved much stronger success. Luxury products in general tend to be associated with social exposure. Maybe luxury mobs or floor cleaning liquid exist but either they do provide some special features for a niche or their sales volumes are relatively tiny. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster

ulfw 9y ago

I absolutely agree with you. It’s plain and simple. They failed because they were useless. Like Silicon Valley builds a lot of products out of a perceived need of their local area, which often doesn’t translate into worldwide product need, Snap built something for the Venice hippster cool-kid crowd. Huge where Snap is located. Tiny globally really.

eradicatethots 9y ago
There are lots of successful but useless or nearly useless products. This is a nearly useless fashion product, but really it’s just something you’d buy for fun. Most fashion products are in that territory.

saimiam 9y ago

I disagree with your entire comment and here’s why - in my view, saying that the reason something failed because it relieved no itch or there was insufficient utility is at par with suggesting that trading is simple because you have to “Buy Low and Sell High, d’oh”. It teaches no one anything they don’t instinctively know. Everything the article says - be it about influencers not picking up and promoting the Spectacles to difficulties with porting content without cropping - is extremely useful to anyone else looking to launch a Spectacles type device.

bambax 9y ago
Of course it would be tautological to say "what's useful is useful" but that's not what the parent is saying. The parent is saying that usefulness is the main, if not only, cause of success, and that other factors are in fact irrelevant (namely, fashionableness, launch strategy, celebrity endorsements, etc.) You can agree or disagree with that thesis, but here you're misrepresenting it.
- saimiam 9y ago
  “Usefulness” is not a metric that can measured or sought in isolation. Usefulness needs an actor trying to perform an action desiring a result. When OP says something failed because it isn’t useful, they are deliberately ignoring the subject and object of the equation. When the article says that influencers didn’t glom on to Spectacles, they are making a statement about influencers not finding it useful but if you read the parent comment, this observation is useless because it obfuscates the true problem - that Spectacles is “useless”.
rootlocus 9y ago
> is extremely useful to anyone else looking to launch a Spectacles type device. Earth has limited resources. I wish people wouldn't feel the need to buy / produce hypster "Spectacles type devices".
jasode 9y ago
>Everything the article says - [...] - is extremely useful to anyone else The post you replied to tried to explain why it's actually not useful. The journalist uses a style of seductive writing (some call it "narrative fallacy"[1]) which connects plausible-sounding causes to its supposedly logical effects. That style of explanation can actually make readers dumber about what happened because it leaves out counterexamples. That "narrative fallacy" is common in writings from Harvard Business Review, histories, biographies, newspapers & pundits trying to explain why the Dow Jones Index went up/down, why startups/products failed/succeeded, etc. All of those suffer the omission of counterexamples. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayden_White https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayden_White

__m 9y ago

Sure, you'll get some people to wear it, see whitemenwearinggoogleglass at tumblr, but ignoring fashion in wearables is just inviting competitors to put you out of business. Please don't wear crocs in public.

bedhead 9y ago

They are worse than useless: they are lame. I won’t define that. It’s like Potter Stewart - I know it when I see it.

snarf21 9y ago

I also don't think they "failed". I think it was all about positioning the company as "not just a teen social app" to help with the IPO. The pitch is Snap is really a camera/picture/video company that happens to have a popular social media app.

pvg 9y ago

WITHOUT any initial hype (such as the Matrix) The Matrix's promotion campaign included a Super Bowl ad.

cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
ad isn't hype
- pvg 9y ago
  So the movie had a huge promotional campaign and nobody noticed or cared? It made $28 million on its opening weekend, 16% of its US gross. This isn't some unknown movie that built up in popularity as word about it spread around.