
Why Snapchat didn’t give Spectacles to techies - kitwalker12
https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/15/spectascobles/
======
jpatokal
> That’s why the first memorable photos of Spectacles weren’t shot by Scoble,
> but by famous fashion photographer Karl Lagerfeld.

How soon we forget: Google Glass actually collaborated with Diane von
Furstenberg (a famous fashion designer) and did a launch party at New York
Fashion Week.

[https://www.fastcompany.com/3001142/google-glass-hits-
runway...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3001142/google-glass-hits-runway-
fashion-week)

But Google positioned Glass as a platform for apps, meaning they _had_ to get
devs in the loop, while Spectacles are intended for precisely one thing:
Snapchat.

~~~
edblarney
Even though G*Glasses were 'in a fashion' show doesn't mean in any way there
were positioned in the proper aspirational way.

Though yes, I agree they had to get devs in the loop 'because apps'.

Snapchat is almost proper consumer marketing company.

Google is a tech company - and they had absolutely no idea how to market and
position those glasses to consumers.

~~~
trymas
> Google is a tech company - and they had absolutely no idea how to market and
> position those glasses to consumers.

wat.

1\. G-glass != snapchat spectacles.

2\. IMHO google tried to create new accessory - smart glasses, they first
wanted to introduce it to developers to create apps for it.

3\. Either:

3.1. Google saw that it was not worth it at that time. Google is in business
of making money after all and not in business of making selfish and shameless
teenagers happy.

3.2. The idea was burned down by privacy concerns. G-glass became recognizable
enough that users won't use because public will dismiss them due to privacy
reasons and vice versa.

I loathe 'startups' like snapchat (though I understand there's money when such
big user base takes pictures/videos of everything around them), but IMHO it's
a matter of time when teenagers will grab another new and hip service to
scream their daily lives to the world and all 'genius of marketing' will
disappear.

~~~
edblarney
If they wold like hotcakes 3.1 would not matter and 3.2 would be rectified
enough to assuage the plebes.

Your point 'they tried to create a new accessory': why is a tech company
trying to create an 'accessory' that nobody wants, and is completely out of
their domain?

Snapchat is very intelligently extending their brand and user experience a
little bit. Google was pushing tech.

Things that we wear, are part of our culture, they are about fashion, trends,
and to some degree functionality.

Google his a tech company that has absolutely no clue how to do consumer
marketing - this is evident in almost everything they do.

When they provide a high degree of utility - then they win - they should stick
to that.

Snapchat is doing it exactly right. And there's no reason to believe that in a
few years, the Snapchat glasses won't be as powerful and 'app-ish' as the
Google glasses.

~~~
notahacker
Google Glass was "almost universally used and appreciated benefits of Android
tablets/phones _in front of your face_ ". Its potential for mainstream use was
limited because most people don't want to socialise with someone with a
surreptitious recording device attached to their head.

Snapchat is "mildly addictive product within certain demographics _in front of
your face_ ". Reasons to assume that it will remain a tiny niche product,
probably even within the Snapchat demographic, include most people not wanting
to socialise with someone with a surreptitious recording device attached to
their head

~~~
ecspike
Here we go again with the undying myth of everyone/most with Glass all
secretly recording everyone. Glass is no more surreptitious than Spectacles.

My peer group used Glass for active stuff. We took video of ourselves
rollerblading, playing hockey, doing OCRs, playing with our kids. The battery
was never good enough to record that long. It would become physically
uncomfortable because the battery would become hot against your temple.

~~~
notahacker
I'm sure all of that is true. Which doesn't change the tendency of people to
think that the person looking at them who _might_ be recording the
conversation to send to their internet buddies is a weirdo. Thats true whether
the distinctive-looking video-augmented eyepiece is Google bland or Snapchat
childish

------
jknoepfler
I look forward to a future in which we are all wearing ridiculously walled-
garden tech on our faces, and a future in which we've gotten over it. I feel
like just as we're slowly recovering the art of making food from the excesses
of the early 20th century, our children's children will have to recover the
art of being a social human being from the excesses of the early 21st century.

I recognize that otherizing an inevitable technology (ubiquitous connected
vision) is taking the wrong side of history, but I hope my grandchildren make
fun of my children for it.

I think it's interesting that the article did not describe the device's
capacities at all.

In the meantime, I think Snapchat's marketing angle is ingenious. They decided
to build trust, but not in the community of makers as Google did, they built
trust in the community of shameless consumers (I mean that non-perjoratively).
Google's mistake is understandable when you think that they are also trying to
be respected in the cloud/app maker/developer space. Snapchat does not have
that problem.

~~~
trymas
>In the meantime, I think Snapchat's marketing angle is ingenious.

IMHO it's not something very ingenious, they are shooting ideas - some of them
stick to the wall.

> They <...> built trust in the community of shameless consumers

..and that's why the idea sticks (just like whole snapchat et al.). It's
shameless and to put it more straight - frequently egoistic (and maybe
arrogant as well?) users who use this and go crazy about it.

With google's glass the media raged about how it's a huge privacy problem [&].
Snapchat's spectacles? Genius!! Short memory.

[&] Though to be more critical, having a huge price point and available to few
people was the problem as well, but IMHO the media sunk the ship before it was
a float by labeling it as a huge privacy issue.

~~~
Lewton
Hm, yes... Let's ponder for a moment on why, when a data mining company sells
a product that gives them access to a ton of private data, people are
skeptical. While a company whose main product is built on the concept of
deleting data, doing the same thing, gets a pass?

~~~
trymas
I would be extremely doubtful of that.

IMHO next step for snapchat is somewhere in AR and I bet that they are using
data from their users for testing/training their face recognition. Also
pictures/videos can be one of their assets for creating other
features/products. Snapchat has ads, so data collection for ad targeting is
extremely likely.

~~~
Lewton
My phrasing was a little muddy.

It's not really relevant whether Snapchat does data mining behind the scenes.
But their brand is built upon ephemeral data. The exact opposite of Google.

It has nothing to do with "short memory" when the public reacts less creeped
out than when google tried to push a similar product.

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

Maybe I'll feel that way about Spectacles in 2020.

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

~~~
RossM
Snapchat-loyal press have been well trained to highlight the spinning LEDs and
not question the privacy angle. Perhaps they're "ok" with it because clips are
shorter and it's not the big bad G.

IMO while it's more noticeable than Glass's single pixel it's still a
concealed camera.

~~~
dilap
probably the same in practice, but glass really looked like it was trying to
be inconspicuous / disappear, which made it much creepier. specs are so
clearly conspicuous and not trying to hide that it makes them seem more
harmless.

also, i'd say there's a general cultural trend of becoming more and more
comfortable with less and less privacy.

~~~
geon
> glass really looked like it was trying to be inconspicuous / disappear

How? If anything, the lense-less frame with a bulge on the side is very
noticable.

~~~
dilap
well, it didn't do a great job of it :)

to me, it still looks _stylistically_ like it's trying to disappear, like it
wants to blend in and become unnoticable. it doesn't seem to be making an
obvious "i'm here" fashion statement like the specs.

obviously it's a subjective emotional statement and difficult to support or
refute, but i really do believe the vastly different appearances of the two
products probably has a lot to do with the different reactions they are
receiving.

people are emotional, visual creates.

------
neya
tldr;

1) Artificial Scarcity

2) Geographic Clustering

3) Buying As An Experience

4) Identifying customers

Edit: Included 4)

~~~
kitwalker12
Also identifying customers

~~~
neya
Thank you, included!

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

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

------
YeGoblynQueenne
Wow. A pair of glasses that not even Karl Lagerfeld can make look cool.

Also- did Snapchat _really_ think those tiny ballons were enough to lift that
snapbot vending machine off the ground? Don't make me laugh, Snapchat!

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

~~~
edblarney
__* The glasses are not a tech product __*

And Snapchat is __* not a tech company __*

That's an important thing to get first :)

~~~
1_2__3
Yes they are and yes it is. Marketing is trying to convince you otherwise and
I'm a little shocked you swallow it so easily.

~~~
edblarney
"Marketing is trying to convince you otherwise and I'm a little shocked you
swallow it so easily"

I've worked in marketing and tech, I know the difference.

Snapchat is not a technology company, any more than Nike is.

Nike is a consumer marketing/apparel/fashion company, that invests a lot in
'sports tech' and used to be (in the 1970's) more of a purely sports tech
company, but made the shift to lifestyle/brand apparel in the 1980's.

Snapchat is as much a 'technology' company as MTV, Pixar, Zara or Wallmart.

------
farright
_> If you want to make something cool, don’t give it to geeks first._

Does anyone else get really tired of stuff like this? Why is it that every
possible difference is celebrated except within liberal circles, with the
exception that nerds are considered objectively bad. In fact the article comes
across as body shaming.

~~~
sidlls
Othering of "nerds" isn't restricted to liberals.

~~~
farright
"othering" of nerds isn't restricted to liberals but it is especially
hypocritical when they do it. Also liberals are predisposed to "other" nerds
because they have chosen nerds to be the symbol of unaware privilege and crude
libertarianism so in their thinking nerds deserve no sympathy.

~~~
dragonwriter
I am somewhat amused by this because I've been a liberal and nerd my whole
life, participated extensively in liberal activist circles, and never once
encountered this among liberals (the closest to this I've seen would be some
segments of the community's reaction to perceived ivory tower intellectuals
that are distant from pragmatics, but even that isn't so much an othering as a
sometimes white-hot debate about priorities and tactics within the movement.)

~~~
vostok
Even as a liberal I think there's actually something to this idea. You can see
it with things like the financial transaction tax proposals that are clearly
meant to hurt nerdy HFTs rather than affect banks. I think part of it is that
nerdy HFTs aren't eloquent enough to explain what they're doing and how it
benefits the world.

~~~
ethanbond
I would love to hear an explanation of how beating the next guy by 1ms is
helping the world enough to justify obscene payouts.

Go for it.

~~~
maxerickson
Lay out the case for the payouts being obscene.

Probably keep in mind that the nominal value of the stocks changing hands on a
given day is hundreds of billions of dollars and that an actively trading
counterparty is facilitating the movement of that money. What's fair
compensation for that?

~~~
ethanbond
How did markets function prior to HFT? They're only facilitating exchange
between other algorithms, right? And in that case how is it helpful to the
market?

Note I'm actually asking these questions - not just being rhetorical. The
whole concept of it seems plainly ridiculous to me but I don't know much about
this area.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_How did markets function prior to HFT?_

You had 10 very tall loud guys in brightly colored jackets yelling at each
other in a pit. Mentally they were running the same algorithms as HFTs, just
slower.

Later on you had some fast fingered guys watching charts and mentally running
the same algorithms as guys in the pit, just a bit faster.

~~~
ethanbond
Except the people were exploiting inefficiencies in markets ( _and still do
today_ ). HFT algorithms exploit inefficiencies in servers, ISPs, fiber optic
cable, a competing algorithm's implementation, etc.

~~~
maxerickson
Those things can't be meaningfully separated from the market.

Exploiting inefficiencies in a competing algorithm is the same type of thing
as exploiting inefficiencies in the mental model of the guy standing next to
you. Taking advantage of better market proximity is the same type of thing as
drinking less than the other guys in the pit.

~~~
ethanbond
If you presuppose that the _purpose_ of trading is to make money in and of
itself then sure. Of course the real (original?) purpose is more tightly
coupled to reality and to real goods exchanging hands. There seems to be a
fundamental difference between profiting from the exchange and profiting from
the mechanism of exchange.

I'm not asking for how we ended up here. I get that faster = better and 1ms
faster is still 1ms better. What I'm asking is what _value_ it brings to the
world — specifically the world outside of, historically, the pit, and today,
outside of the computers executing trades.

Are goods more accurately priced? Is there more liquidity in the market? Is
the market more stable? Is _the market_ more efficient, or is it only the
technical implementation of the market that's made more efficient by these? Do
these benefits, if they're present, outweigh the cost of things like flash
crashes caused by algorithms? If flash crashes hurt all of us, then shouldn't
we all be benefited by the algorithms when they're doing well? Do we benefit
and by how much?

This is why people want "nerdy HFTs" to be taxed in a special way. Maybe it's
because they can't articulate the value or maybe it's because there is no
value. I can't see the difference and I can't get anything other than evasive
comparisons when I ask what the difference is.

~~~
maxerickson
Borrowing a point from tptacek, Vanguard has come out and said that they have
lower costs due to HFT. Their customers save money over the previous providers
of liquidity.

[https://www.ft.com/content/ff8c6486-cb37-11e3-ba95-00144feab...](https://www.ft.com/content/ff8c6486-cb37-11e3-ba95-00144feabdc0)

(bounce "Vanguard chief defends high-frequency trading firms" through Google
if there is a paywall)

~~~
ethanbond
Awesome, I appreciate the link. It's still not totally clear to me how/why
this helps Vanguard, or whether the pros outweigh the cons for the market as a
whole, but this is in fact the type of evidence that I've been asking for.
Thank you for sharing!

~~~
tptacek
It helps Vanguard because they don't make money through active trading: they
are literally the vanguard of the movement, now practically accepted as
orthodoxy, that funds should be passive and diversified across the whole
market.

If you buy and hold, HFT _helps_ you, by reducing the cost of execution ---
both by reducing the spread, which is a tax you pay any time you place a
market order, and by literally reducing trading fees. In fact, even if you're
an active trader, HFT usually helps you: the only people truly harmed by HFT
are the ones who tried to make a living selling liquidity before, who are now
being outcompeted.

