Snap sold fewer than 42K Spectacles, down 35% in Q2(techcrunch.com) |
Snap sold fewer than 42K Spectacles, down 35% in Q2(techcrunch.com) |
And before you downvote me, realize that basically, this is a gimmicky product, even if you think it is cool.
While you are allowed to film anyone in public, the act of having an "always pointing highly visible camera", will elicit more negative reactions than positive ones... So unless snap is pretty tone deaf, this was known to be a non long term product, more of a product to appease their top producer base.
I don't think Snap deserved their IPO valuation, and the company is uninvestable anyway because of the share structure that locks voting power forever away from common stock holders. But I'll be sad if Snap goes away because they're so different from everybody else in this space.
Seemed to take 5 min when I did it. Enough to kill the moment. Sharp contrast to how fast Snap is on iOS.
Plus the glasses are uncomfortable and have large blind spots, so I can't wear them all the time (i.e. not good for driving)
The upload takes place in the background, so usually it would be completed by the time you're done with whatever activity and go into the app.
I'm not sure about that... if you have a technology that won't quite fit in a 'standard' design, but you try and force it anyway, it'll look bad regardless. Better to embrace the goofiness and make something a little fun instead.
The problem was that nobody knew what to do with them, and Snap being setup the way it is, it's too hard to take cues from what other people might be doing with them because it's hard to find their videos.
The only thing I bring them out for now is to make little cooking videos for my friends, the hands free POV camera is really good for that, and uploading a little narrative is pretty effortless.
I also agree that the product design is excellent. There is absolutely a polish to the Spectacles that makes them enjoyable to use.
We've continuously reduced the friction it takes to share experiences with one another, spectacles is another step in that direction.
Juicero was just an overengineered scam.
So that's what that yellow thing at the mall was! I thought it was some sort of bizarre Minions tie in for something.
Good lord please stop. Save that for marketing discussion places. I don't even know what this nonsense means, nor do I suspect most people.
- Extremely vague besides "push a button to record video".
- No mention of battery power, length of charge, app integration, quality of video, etc, etc.
- It seems to be only targeted at women? There's no pictures of men wearing them.
- What do the sides of the glasses look like? All pictures are the front angle. Does it look bulkier because it has a camera?
- I see a prominent "Find a Snapbot" button, I had no idea "Snapbot" meant pop-up store until I read about it in a news article.
I could go on...
The pictures are visually appealing but having zero sales copy was a terrible idea. How can you sell something without explaining it?
I too would have liked to see an Amazon link, I prefer using that over a custom online shop every time. And Amazon forces them to write an actual description about what the product does.
They literally go around Cannes and Madison Ave telling everyone they understand the future of marketing... but can't market their own product.
Speaks volumes.
Also, sometimes when watching other people's stories, I see Spectacles ads. Though, the Spectacles story might be tucked away by like, the Daily Mail and the other sponsored stories.
Most of the reviews on amazon are from men and most of those complain about the style or being too small, so clearly men were very motivated to buy this product.
I think there's a fundamental marketing mistake here with wearable cameras. Its not really going to appeal to sexy instagram addicts who can't selfie with them, but to busy parents and older people, especially those with limited mobility or inability to quickly pull out a smartphone. I think its obvious that those kinds of markets don't bring in SV money, so here we are pretending women actually want to buy and wear these ridiculous looking things all day. Sorry, but the huge graphics around the lens mar an otherwise tasteful design. Clearly the market chose against this concept.
I'm also skeptical an always facing camera, be it on glasses, wearable watch/pedant, etc will ever be socially acceptable. Apparently, the Google Glasses problem hasn't been solved yet and may not ever be solved in the consumer space.
>Snaps from Spectacles do not directly go to your phone. You can save Snaps taken with Spectacles to your phone by exporting them from Snapchat Memories to your Camera roll
Also the implementation sounds wonky. I'm guessing this is a iOS limitation? On Android you should be able to write directly to the camera folder.
Not even he is narcissistic enough to post the video up. I've never seen one video from the glasses.
Best I can tell he wears them as some kind of fashion statement in the weird and quirky SF gay tech scene.
> Snap revealed during its call following weak Q2 earnings that it generated $5.4 million in “Other” revenue, which would equate to around 41,500 pairs of its Spectacles camera sunglasses at a $130 price point. That’s compared to $8.3 million in Other revenue in Q1, or fewer than 64,000 pairs
I don't understand why companies feel they need to start selling average household products, but with cameras, microphones, wifi, and bluetooth. Maybe I'm just paranoid but I don't even like my laptop having a camera.
1. Allow more people to be tied in directly to snapchat and make users more loyal and provide a better experience.
2. Create a new revenue stream based on wearables.
3. A PR vehicle to drive more users into the platform.
I think it accomplished #3. It may be able to accomplish 1-2 but we should wait and see. Also, something like Spectacles probably need a price drop to drive more people to buy it and the fact that this wearable doesn't drive people to upgrade to new spectacles would be an issue also.
I bring my gopro on all my trips. Its a great way to record memories without using up your phone storage or battery. It's also easier to hold, has better FoV, and much better video quality. It's a no brainer. I'm surprised action cams have not hit mainstream as far as trip-devices go.
And why should the video quality be better? The samples I see on Youtube are ok but better?
Yes, you can fix an action cam to your helmet or surf board but this is the only feature a phone lacks.
1. Take video
2. Enable BT and WiFi on your smartphone
3. Open Snapchat on your smartphone
4. Wait for what seems like forever for the phone to find the Spectacles. Charging them in the case seems to help, as does charging the phone?
5. Wait for the phone to grab the low res version.
6. Wait for the phone to grab the "HD" version. (Note: this may (?) be automatic on iOS. I own an LG V20.)
7. Navigate through Snapchat's terrible interface to the video you want to save.
8. Save to your phone. You're done!
They come out as 800x800 videos that are circular, so the true resolution is (-21.4% vs square).
It was gimmicky, with no real-world use case, and "sold" as some kinda of geffen good that was only available in limited quantities.
Some anecdata: I have been traveling the U.S. for the last year, stopping in mostly major cities, and lived in Boston prior to that. In all that time I didn't see a single pair of Spectacles until last month... in Houston, TX of all places!
Something like $70 for a half square mile for a day on the geofence I drew in Santa Monica. It's $5 for an office building in downtown Austin for a day.
Their ui is really fun!
People spent hours carefully choosing their glasses. You won't be able to get everyone to buy the same design.
Spectacles is a disaster.
Edit: Imagine if they would've had a male styled version, and tried to get Kanye West, or some other pop/style star wearing them.
Huge miss.
Sounds like it was a flop regardless, but I do think the 'techy dad' market is viable at the right pricepoint. Not sure how the social aspect would work out, but if it had a red LED running when it was recording I doubt anyone would mind.
Remember CueCat?
I think his point was simply that their marketing misses 50% of the market. His point is not that it's wrong to only market towards women, his point was that it seems weird from a revenue perspective to only market to to half the population.
If Spectacles take off, they can always "grow it and bro it" later. Starting off with a focused target market seems like a reasonable approach to me.
But of course that doesn't seem to transfer that well to selling hardware.
Why so aggressive?
There is a clear reasoning for this strategy. People and especially press talk more about the product.
Btw, I think Snapchat is quite intuitive. Some features might not be easy to find or to know about. But once you know it is very intuitive and fast to use them. I think it is similar to Vim, if you don't know anything about Vim you cannot even quit Vim but once you know all the stuff Vim is one of the most intuitive editors because UI and most commands are well designed.
If you can't use a product right away without help then it is not intuitive by definition. However it doesn't mean you won't like it if taught how to extract value.
For instance it's not intuitive to deep fry a banana and then put salt on it before eating it, but I'm quite certain you will finish the plate once you try it.
There is no comparison.
Easiness to hold and wide FOV are game changers.
I often record for 5-10 minute chunks. Holding my phone for that amount of time while walking around would suck.
A phone is great for a 30 second video clip here and there. but if you really want to record a whole day of activity a phone sucks to use.
In my most recent trip i took 4 hours of footage over 10 days. I would never enjoy doing that on my phone.
I can't imagine the spectacles not being usable over normal eyeglasses either, just like other off-the-shelf sunglasses or 3D glasses.
Um. Not mine. Maybe stop wildly generalizing and your market analysis will improve.
As a producer and consumer, I prefer the pre-FB days because the bar was high.
Did you ask your friends or the users that actually look at those? You are obviously biased so your own feeling doesn't count. ;)
We have the opposite problem. How to add friction to that sharing...
Spectacle and Google Glass's issue of having a camera on your face won't weird in another decade. When this generation's teenagers are living out their 20s.
Older people will find hyper-reality frightening though we'll get use to it, just never participate to the degree younger generations will.
Nobody likes invasion of privacy, period. Especially young people. An old married couple in their 60 has not much to hide (also nothing much interesting to share), whereas a teenager does a lot of things they don't want to be made public.
If you don't believe me, go ask any teenager if they're cool with some random person "frictionlessly sharing" someone else's footage without consent. Google glass didn't fail because it was weird, it failed because people passionately hated when someone else was wearing a google glass.
It's great for sharing photos and quick texts but no one uses snap maps, the sponsored content is cringe, and I have yet to see spectacles in real life because unsurprisingly, we don't have the money to buy $100+ camera glasses.
I should also add that a lot of my friends do use Instagram stories, but a lot of the time it's just a picture with the text "AMOS: {sc_username}" (AMOS means "add me on Snapchat") so take from that what you will.
(ever noticed that magazine where the cover is always "how to lose 30 pounds in a day" and then a chocolate cake?)
Facebook and Snap are 7 years apart, calm down.
I do think it'll get better over time. NFC/tap pairing will eventually replace Menu + Manual Madness, show-stopping bugs will get fixed, capability sets will stabilize, conventions will develop to smooth over variation in UI choices, "worse is better" decisions will be unwound, and eventually it'll be a smooth experience and people will wonder how they ever lived with wires. If my own experiences are typical of even a tiny minority of users, however, that day is still disappointingly far off.
Nobody is interested in the tech becoming more comfortable.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth#Bluetooth_3.0_.2B_HS
https://github.com/thaliproject/Thali_CordovaPlugin/issues/1...
I have similar stories for every single bluetooth device that I have ever tried, which amounts to probably a dozen peripherals and half that many hosts. I've had fleeting moments of "it's magic" to punctuate the sea of crap so I'm fully on board with the potential of the technology, but it has continued to mature at an obnoxiously slow rate.
It gets wonky if that single speaker has paired with multiple devices before. For example in a home, where you've paired it with your laptop, phone, iPad, etc. Try it out. Audio will cut off sometimes suddenly when it decides to switch pairing partners as another paired device appears in range.
The GPS also connects to satellites in a fraction of the time my Suunto watch did. It sucks when you're standing in the parking lot waiting to establish signal before your run.
Mini review: the GPS is also super quick to acquire compared to my (now bricked) 800 - but the touchscreen is awful.
To connect to a different one, hold the button longer and press connect on the other device.
I use it on my iPhone, Android tablet and Windows 10 PC
So I have an iPad, macbook, and iPhone in my room all turned on at the same time. All with bluetooth on. All have been paired with the speaker.
I now turn on the bluetooth speaker.
How does it decide which device to connect to? Amazingly, it is always the wrong one. Every single time.