Lens Flair
About those Snap Spectacles…
No sooner do I discuss the odd nature of Friday news, does a great example hit. In this case, news leaked out of Snapchat that they were on the verge of announcing a new product, Spectacles, and off to the races, publications went. The Wall Street Journal, which undoubtedly did not intend to run a long, exclusive profile of a major new product from perhaps the hottest startup right now at 8pm on a Friday, hit publish.
And thus, Snap Inc., was born.
Friday night be damned, the hot takes followed. In some cases, better than usual — perhaps fueled by some adult beverages. And now we head into Monday after a weekend to digest what Snap just did.
First and foremost, the very direct framing of Spectacles as a toy is smart. Under-promise, over-deliver 101. As many have noted, basically the opposite of Google Glass. Partially as a result of the stigma around that product, Snap had a very tight rope to walk here. But I think they’re going to pull it off because we already have the answer to the questions that will pop up to wearers:
“What are those things on your face?”“They’re just something fun I’m trying out. A toy.”“Oh, weird. But cool, I guess.”
Contrast that with:
“What are those things on your face?”“The future.”“Get the fuck out of my bar.”
“Toy” is the equivalent of the Apple “hobby” statement, but I suspect it’s even more clever because I think the step from toy-to-business will be even more direct than hobby-to-business has proven to be with Apple TV.
And if not, well, it was just a toy!
The framing is important here as well.¹ Whereas Google Glass looked inward, Snap Spectacles look outward. That is, one product was mainly meant to serve information to you, the other is meant to serve information from you. Interestingly, both were positioned around the notion of making people more present by removing the slab of rectangular glass in front of our faces. But I suspect we were just too early for the inward version. Gotta nail outward first. That’s what Spectacles is going after.
It’s also a much more natural transition point because conceptually, the notion of taking photos/videos with a piece of hardware that you hold up is a little odd. It came about because that’s what technology had allowed for at the time. But now, with sensors being as small as they are, there’s no reason we can’t have cameras almost anywhere. And so why not have them where you have your natural cameras? Your eyes.
Same with the format of an image/video. The rectangle. In some ways it’s tied to our field of view (as well as delivery mechanism: movie screen, television screen, smartphone screen, etc). But should it be? Snapchat has already broken down this barrier once, in a way, with the proliferation of vertical video. Now it’s time to try with circular video — or, at least, video not tied to any set format. (Portrait? Landscape? VR? AR? All of the above.)
A lot is being made about the quality of said pictures/video taken with Spectacles. While we don’t know for sure yet, presumably, it will be hard to match the quality of footage taken with an expensive piece of hardware (be it camera or smartphone) held steady in your hands. But who cares? In fact, that’s probably part of the point.
As Evan Spiegel notes in the WSJ piece:
“People wonder why their daughter is taking 10,000 photos a day. What they don’t realize is that she isn’t preserving images. She’s talking.”
Further:
“It’s not about an accumulation of photos defining who you are. It’s about instant expression and who you are right now. Internet-connected photography is really a reinvention of the camera. And what it does is allow you to share your experience of the world while also seeing everyone else’s experience of the world, everywhere, all the time.”
Instant expression. That’s why all the references to Polaroid make even more sense than they may appear to on the surface. After the launch of Snapchat “Memories” I wondered if there wasn’t a budding rivalry between Snapchat and Apple, in terms of who owns the camera. I think at a high-level, that’s the right way to look at it, but the framing is a bit off.
At least right now, Snap has to know they can’t battle Apple when it comes to optics at scale. They’re happy to cede the high-end of the portable camera market to Apple. They’ll take a different path, where quality matters less but speed of sharing matters more. And go from there. As Seth Stevenson notes in the WSJ profile:
Then there’s another side: Spiegel’s eye on what’s coming down the pike. Spectacles will allow Snap Inc. to at last control a physical camera, instead of making the app a slave to your smartphone’s built-in lens. He hints that there could be far-reaching implications if Snapchat can seize the means of image production. It’s not mere fun, it turns out. There are commerce gears clicking beneath the frivolous exterior of these glasses.
So where does Snap go from here? That’s the really exciting part. No one knows. Maybe Spectacles work, maybe they don’t. Maybe they don’t but some element of learning from them leads to the next product from Snap that does work. The key is that the company isn’t afraid to venture down this path — far outside their comfort zone.
That’s easier said than done — especially when going from software to hardware. Think about how many companies have crossed this chasm successfully. It’s hard to think of an example beyond Google — and even that track record is mixed at best. For every Chromecast, there’s a Nexus Q.
But you can’t succeed here and build a truly lasting company by sitting on the sidelines, doing the safe thing. You can build plenty of ephemeral companies that way. That was Snapchat, not Snap.
¹ Conceptual framing, not actual framing (of the glasses), which I’m officially too old to make a statement on.
