{"id":12300,"date":"2016-09-24T10:38:40","date_gmt":"2016-09-24T10:38:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=12300"},"modified":"2016-09-24T10:41:03","modified_gmt":"2016-09-24T10:41:03","slug":"snapchat-releases-first-hardware-product-spectacles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/technology\/gadgets\/snapchat-releases-first-hardware-product-spectacles.html","title":{"rendered":"Snapchat Releases First Hardware Product, Spectacles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Snapchat Releases First Hardware Product, Spectacles<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

Snapchat Releases First Hardware Product, Spectacles<\/strong> : IN AN UNMARKED BUILDING on a quiet side street just off the beach in Venice, California, 26-year-old Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel stands in a small conference room. He\u2019s draped a towel over a mysterious object sitting on a table. He is eager to the point of jitters.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou wanna see it?\u201d he asks, grinning widely. There\u2019s drama in this reveal: I\u2019m about to join an exceedingly small circle of people whom Spiegel has shown the object to. As he lifts the towel, he breaks into a delighted laugh. \u201cBoom!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

What initially appears to be a normal pair of sunglasses turns out to be Spectacles, the first hardware product from Snap Inc., as the firm has been newly christened (Spiegel is refreshing the company name because its offerings now go beyond the Snapchat app). When you slip Spectacles on and tap a button near the hinge, it records up to 10 seconds of video from your first-person vantage. Each new tap records another clip.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why use a pair of video sunglasses\u2014available this fall, by the way, one-size-fits-all in black, teal or coral\u2014instead of holding up your smartphone like everyone else? Because, Spiegel says, the images that result are fundamentally different. Spectacles\u2019 camera uses a 115-degree-angle lens, wider than a typical smartphone\u2019s and much closer to the eyes\u2019 natural field of view. The video it records is circular, more like human vision. (Spiegel argues that rectangles are an unnecessary vestige of printing photos on sheets of paper.) As you record, your hands are free to pet dogs, hug babies or flail around at a concert. You can reach your arms out to people you\u2019re filming, instead of holding your phone up, as Spiegel describes it, \u201clike a wall in front of your face.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He remembers testing a prototype in early 2015 while hiking with his fianc\u00e9e, supermodel Miranda Kerr. \u201cIt was our first vacation, and we went to Big Sur for a day or two. We were walking through the woods, stepping over logs, looking up at the beautiful trees. And when I got the footage back and watched it, I could see my own memory, through my own eyes\u2014it was unbelievable. It\u2019s one thing to see images of an experience you had, but it\u2019s another thing to have an experience of the experience. It was the closest I\u2019d ever come to feeling like I was there again.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

WHEN YOU ASK PEOPLE in the tech industry about Spiegel, and how it is that by age 26 he\u2019s built a company with more than 1,000 employees and offices on three continents, one thing they often cite is Spiegel\u2019s aptitude for product design. It\u2019s what he studied at Stanford, before dropping out just shy of graduation to focus on Snapchat. It\u2019s what makes his app so addictive that it now reaches more than 150 million daily users\u2014nearly 15 million more than Twitter. It\u2019s what attracts star talent like Imran Khan, whom Spiegel lured from Credit Suisse in 2014. \u201cThe reason I joined here was Evan,\u201d says Khan, now chief strategy officer of Snap Inc., \u201cbecause it was evident that he was the best product visionary I\u2019d met in my entire life. And with technology companies, if you don\u2019t have good product, you die.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The glasses are the culmination of a years-long development process described by Spiegel as \u201cMeasure a thousand times, cut once.\u201d They have thrust his company, suddenly, into the teeming retail gadget marketplace. And they risk provoking, as anyone who recalls the saga of Google Glass knows, a fair amount of ridicule the moment they begin to appear on the pimpled faces of America\u2019s teens.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the moment, Spectacles appears to be a bit of a lark. At a price of $129.99 and with limited distribution, it won\u2019t be relied upon for significant immediate revenue. Spiegel refers to it as a toy, to be worn for kicks at a barbecue or an outdoor concert\u2014Spectacles video syncs wirelessly to a smartphone, making it easily shareable. \u201cWe\u2019re going to take a slow approach to rolling them out,\u201d says Spiegel. \u201cIt\u2019s about us figuring out if it fits into people\u2019s lives and seeing how they like it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Why make this product, with its attendant risks, and why now? \u201cBecause it\u2019s fun,\u201d he says with another laugh. This looseness, this sense of confident experimentation, seems to encapsulate one aspect of Snapchat\u2019s startling success.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s another side: Spiegel\u2019s eye on what\u2019s 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\u2019s built-in lens. He hints that there could be far-reaching implications if Snapchat can seize the means of image production. It\u2019s not mere fun, it turns out. There are commerce gears clicking beneath the frivolous exterior of these glasses.<\/span><\/p>\n

MICHAEL LYNTON, the 56-year-old CEO of Sony Entertainment, remembers the first time he saw Snapchat. It was a few years ago, before Spiegel had done any serious fundraising. Lynton\u2019s two older daughters were already using the app, and his youngest was trying to download it, so Lynton\u2019s wife, Jamie, became curious. \u201cWhen she realized what it was, she said, \u2018This is fantastic,\u2019 \u201d Lynton remembers. \u201cBecause there\u2019d been a number of kids at my children\u2019s school whose reputations were harmed by something they\u2019d put on the internet.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That was the initial selling point of Snapchat: the means to send messages\u2014especially photos\u2014that would self-delete after just a few seconds in the recipient\u2019s hands. No more ill-advised keg-stand shots coming back to haunt you at a job interview. No drunk, half-nude selfies making your life hell when you later decide to run for district attorney. Teenage, young adult or even Wall Street shenanigans would evaporate before they could incriminate.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jamie Lynton was so enamored with the notion of vanishing content that she tracked Spiegel down and asked if she could meet him. Spiegel had co-founded Snapchat in 2011 while still at Stanford. By now he had dropped out and was working on the app full time with a tiny team based in his father\u2019s house in Los Angeles. He made it over to the Lyntons\u2019 home in Brentwood within the hour. \u201cI was stunned at how impressive he was in the room as he talked to Jamie,\u201d says Michael Lynton. \u201cYou got the sense he had a commercial instinct. But he was also so articulate about the philosophy of what he was trying to do.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Lyntons, among his initial investors, gave Spiegel bridge financing. Shortly thereafter he received major venture capital valuing the company at tens of millions of dollars, and as he assembled a corporate board, he put Michael Lynton on it. By late 2013, with Lynton\u2019s advisement, Spiegel was spurning an offer from Facebook to buy Snapchat for $3 billion in cash (possibly more, depending on whom you ask). The infamous November 2014 Sony hack uncovered a slew of Snapchat information embedded in Lynton\u2019s email. (\u201cThe benefit of having online stuff disappear is something I can probably speak to,\u201d says Lynton, laughing, \u201cwith the greatest conviction of anybody.\u201d) Among the juiciest tidbits was a private comment Lynton emailed to a friend regarding the Facebook offer. \u201cIf you knew the real number,\u201d Lynton wrote, \u201cyou would book us all a suite at Bellevue.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For Spiegel, then 23 years old, deflecting Facebook\u2019s avalanche of money was an astonishing gamble. The hunt for revenue was, and remains, uncertain. A huge number of daily users does not guarantee success\u2014just ask Twitter. And there are risks inherent in any service dependent on the goodwill of fickle young internet users. \u201cLook at the fate Vine has suffered,\u201d says Richard Greenfield, a media and tech analyst at the trading firm BTIG. The video-looping service \u201cwas all the rage, but it now appears to be in real pain. I think they were out-innovated. In the mobile world, you\u2019re only as good as the next competitor coming along.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

So far, though, time and subsequent investors have proven Spiegel wise. Recent reports peg Snap Inc.\u2019s value anywhere from $16 billion to $22 billion.<\/span><\/p>\n

WHAT FACEBOOK ENVIED in 2013, and what tech observers still marvel at, is the extent to which young Americans are entranced by Snapchat. As it turned out, users weren\u2019t focused solely on sending risqu\u00e9 content without consequences. (That feature had always been a tad overhyped. Anyone with quick screenshot reflexes, or a second camera, can grab a friend\u2019s embarrassing image before it disappears into the ether.) Instead, what young people came to adore about Snapchat\u2019s disappearing photos is how they make social media a far more casual experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t like Facebook, where you can build a lasting monument to yourself with curated photo albums from spring break and graduation. Nor was it Instagram, where you post flattering selfies and then wait to see how many \u201clikes\u201d they accrue. On Snapchat, photos and videos quickly expire. With no way for users to \u201cfave\u201d or \u201cshare\u201d them, Snaps never go viral. There\u2019s less pressure to be perfect.<\/span><\/p>\n

Celebrities have jumped onto Snapchat in part because they face no rude feedback there, the way they might on other platforms. \u201cOn Snapchat you can be so open and share whatever you want,\u201d says Kim Kardashian via email. \u201cThere\u2019s something so freeing about not feeling judged, shamed or bullied by not having any comments or likes. You\u2019re free to be you!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Most Snaps between pals are tossed-off, jaunty communiqu\u00e9s. This is the dumb outfit I\u2019m wearing right now. Here\u2019s a funny dog I\u2019m looking at. Check out the goofy thing I\u2019m up to this very second. Snaps aren\u2019t meant to stand the test of time, or even be viewed again tomorrow. Your Snapchat Story is a reel of photos and videos taken in the past 24 hours, melting away to be replaced by whatever happens next. (When Snapchat recently introduced Memories, a feature that lets you add older, saved photos to today\u2019s Story, there was mild uproar that the feature had upended one of the app\u2019s central covenants. Spiegel sees it as simply giving users more creative tools to express how they\u2019re feeling.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Even the interface is relaxed. There\u2019s no instruction manual on the app, and finding people isn\u2019t always intuitive\u2014users are expected to fumble around and figure things out. \u201cWe make it easy to play with,\u201d says Spiegel. \u201cYou can\u2019t break anything on Snapchat.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For some older users not as adept at navigating new software, the lack of guidance can be confusing. \u201cI used to think Snapchat was like those high-pitched whistle sounds that only teenagers can hear,\u201d says Stewart Butterfield, 43-year-old CEO of the corporate messaging platform Slack. \u201cIt was a pretty hard thing for me to grasp at the very beginning. I come from a generation where a one-megabyte hard drive was incredibly expensive, and digital information seemed so precious because you had to make tough choices about what to keep or delete. So the idea that this photo is not going to be saved somewhere forever took a while to wrap my head around. But then I realized, it\u2019s just like a conversation. You have the memory of it, but you don\u2019t have a perfect recording. And that makes it much more spontaneous and free.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That concept\u2014ephemeral conversations conducted through images\u2014is the prime mover driving Snapchat\u2019s popularity. \u201cPeople wonder why their daughter is taking 10,000 photos a day,\u201d says Spiegel. \u201cWhat they don\u2019t realize is that she isn\u2019t preserving images. She\u2019s talking.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Snapchat makes it easy to annotate photos and videos by adding text, a quick finger drawing or a variety of predesigned embellishments, all of which encourage creativity. I send you a pic of me frowning next to my car with the words \u201cparking ticket\u201d scrawled above my head and a Snapchat-provided \u201cManhattan\u201d chyron at the bottom of the screen. You send me a video of you fake crying with \u201csorry\u201d typed beneath and a sad-face emoji hovering over your shoulder.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not about an accumulation of photos defining who you are,\u201d says Spiegel. \u201cIt\u2019s 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\u2019s experience of the world, everywhere, all the time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Snapchat<\/p>\n

SNAPCHAT\u2019S NUMBERS keep growing. More than 60 percent of 13-to-34-year-old smartphone users are now on the app. Snapchatters send more than one billion Snaps a day and watch more than 10 billion videos. Among the younger generation, Snapchat has essentially become what television was for baby boomers. Consider a stat that Snapchat employs to woo advertisers: On any given day, the app reaches 41 percent of all 18-to-34-year-olds in the United States, while an average TV network in the top-15 for the same demographic reaches six percent.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wherever eyeballs (and particularly young eyeballs) go, ad dollars follow. This is the crux of a brutal battle in the tech sphere right now. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat are all fighting for their slice of the time people spend looking at video on phones. Why? Because marketers will pay good money to insert mobile video ads inside that content.<\/span><\/p>\n

Facebook remains the behemoth, powered in large part by the fact that it warehouses so many people\u2019s digital identities. Its core pitch is that its wealth of user information allows advertisers to micro-target. If you want to sell diapers to a suburban, Spanish-speaking woman who holds a college degree and recently gave birth, Facebook can help you find her\u2014and serve her customized ads (though Procter & Gamble, the largest advertiser in the world, recently moved away from targeting consumers quite so precisely, with a spokesperson confessing that some P&G ads \u201cwent too narrow\u201d).<\/span><\/p>\n

Snapchat can\u2019t offer those micro-targeting capabilities. It tends to know more general things about you\u2014such as your age, your gender, your location and whether your phone is iOS or Android. It counteracts this by functioning, from an advertiser\u2019s perspective, more like television.<\/span><\/p>\n

An advertiser who buys on Snapchat can be assured it will reach a very wide swath of American youth, just as it once did by running ads on MTV. \u201cYou\u2019re reaching a certain demographic, broadly, at a place where they spend a lot of time and come back to throughout the day,\u201d says Ben Thompson, who writes about the technology industry at Stratechery.com. \u201cI see Snapchat as a natural recipient of TV ad dollars as those dollars move online.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

When you watch videos on Snapchat\u2014whether Stories from a friend or a celebrity such as Kardashian, or professional content on Snapchat\u2019s Discover channels from media outlets like BuzzFeed or The Wall Street Journal\u2014the app will autoplay clips one after another and slip ads in between. These ads can be full-screen video with sound, creating an effect very much like a TV commercial interrupting a sitcom. The Snapchat Stories feature has been so attractive to both users and marketers that Instagram (which is owned by Facebook) was driven to imitate it this summer with Instagram Stories\u2014not even bothering to change the name.<\/span><\/p>\n

Neither Spiegel nor Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom would comment on Stories for this article. But it\u2019s not the first time Snapchat has faced replication efforts from Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s empire. In 2012, Facebook created an app called Poke that essentially attempted to clone Snapchat. Facebook\u2019s failure with Poke no doubt helped spur the 2013 buyout offer that Spiegel rebuffed. Facebook then tried and failed again to imitate Snapchat with a 2014 app called Slingshot. At this point, Thompson views Instagram\u2019s copycatting as a \u201cdefensive move\u201d by Facebook.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFacebook is trying to put Snapchat in a box of dominating U.S. teens and young adults,\u201d says Thompson. \u201cThey\u2019re trying to limit Snapchat from expanding. But they have admitted they won\u2019t get those users back. They\u2019re not trying to take Snapchat\u2019s users away; they\u2019re just trying to prevent new people from trying Snapchat in the first place.\u201d (Facebook declined to comment for this article.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Thompson feels Snapchat has passed a threshold of user adoption that makes it unlikely to be abandoned en masse. BTIG\u2019s Greenfield even envisions it finding growth in older users. After all, Facebook started on college campuses but now grandmothers check it daily.<\/span><\/p>\n

Snapchat won\u2019t comment on its revenue figures. An internal document reported on by TechCrunch suggests that the company took in a paltry $59 million in 2015. But Snapchat has begun to ramp up its overtures to advertisers, attempting to offer better feedback metrics and slightly more advanced targeting options (like knowing whether a user tended to watch news-based content on Snapchat\u2019s Discover channels or preferred lifestyle content), and the document in the TechCrunch report held that Snapchat estimates 2016 revenues between $250 million and $350 million. In 2017, it aims to bring in $500 million to $1 billion.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ambitions like that will depend in part on Snapchat\u2019s continuing ability to generate new ad formats that marketers love. For instance, Lenses are special effects you can add to your Snapchat selfie, turning your face into a dog with a wagging tongue or making it peek through a hole in a piece of toast. Sponsored versions of Lenses allow you to transform yourself into a taco (with a Taco Bell logo in the corner of the screen) or animate a bucket of Gatorade being dumped over your head. Even luxury retailers like Burberry, Michael Kors and Tiffany & Co. have gotten into the sponsored Lenses game. What makes the format especially attractive is that users are choosing to include these ads in their Snaps. And on average, they\u2019ll spend 20 seconds playing around with a sponsored Lens before sending the Snap\u2014similar to the length of a TV commercial, yet radically different in terms of how the consumer is engaging with the brand. Facebook, in another acknowledgement of Snapchat envy, has recently experimented with its own version of this feature.<\/span><\/p>\n

SPIEGEL MADE a deliberate choice to base Snapchat in Venice instead of the bland suburbs of Silicon Valley. A far more vibrant culture surrounds him here. \u201cI figured out what I want to do with you today,\u201d he says, leading me from the conference room out to the sidewalk. \u201cThere\u2019s something I want to show you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As we stroll the sun-splashed streets, I barrage him with personal questions. Spiegel grew up in Pacific Palisades with two younger sisters and two attorney parents (his mother chose to stay home after Spiegel was born). He attended the private Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences\u2014known for attracting the children of Southern California\u2019s rich and famous\u2014before he left for Stanford. He tells me he\u2019s still tight with his high school friends. He says his favorite book is Milan Kundera\u2019s The Unbearable Lightness of Being and that he once wrote a school paper in which he linked the novel with the Czech-French photographer Josef Koudelka\u2019s series of snapshots from 1968 Prague. He frequently asks for informational meetings with people from non-tech industries, ranging from fashion designers to risk analysts to politicians, and gets them. He says it\u2019s his favorite perk of being a famous CEO.<\/span><\/p>\n

But it\u2019s clear that Spiegel is intensely uncomfortable when it comes to talking about himself. When I express sympathy, he confesses, with a wan smile, \u201cThis is like talking to a therapist with the ability to humiliate you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Public perceptions of Spiegel have been shaped by a few unsavory incidents from his college years. There were leaks of vulgar emails he sent to frat buddies back at Stanford, which he now calls \u201cabsolutely mortifying.\u201d He also waged a nasty legal battle with a Stanford fraternity brother over early Snapchat ownership claims\u2014which he is now legally constrained from discussing. Spiegel\u2019s general reluctance to do much press has resulted in a lack of rosy counternarratives.<\/span><\/p>\n

He\u2019s especially private when it comes to discussing Kerr, the 33-year-old Australian supermodel he\u2019s been dating since 2015. Kerr was previously married to the actor Orlando Bloom, with whom she has a 5-year-old son. \u201cI love her, and she\u2019s an inspiration,\u201d Spiegel tells me. \u201cI feel very lucky and grateful to have a great partner.\u201d After that, he ends the line of inquiry, declining to comment on tabloid rumors that he\u2019s been ring shopping. A few days later, reports emerged that he and Kerr had become engaged. Kerr broke the news on Snapchat, posting a Snap in which a cartoon avatar of Spiegel is down on one knee, proposing to her. (The cartoon was created by Snapchat\u2019s Friendmoji service, introduced after the company acquired Bitmoji earlier this year.)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOK, we\u2019re here,\u201d Spiegel says, ducking into a tent set up at the edge of a busy street. Inside, it\u2019s dim, and there are several photography umbrellas and a Hasselblad camera on a tripod. A few days before, Spiegel had met the documentary filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, director of An Inconvenient Truth and Waiting for \u201cSuperman.\u201d Guggenheim lives a short walk from Snapchat\u2019s Venice office, and he\u2019d invited Spiegel to check out this temporary photo booth he\u2019d thrown up on a whim. Anyone could walk in and, for a small payment, get a studio-quality portrait. Spiegel loved the concept.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Spiegel\u2019s thinking, Snapchat isn\u2019t a social-media company. It\u2019s a camera company. He\u2019s studied the histories of firms like Kodak and Polaroid and how they pitched themselves to the public. \u201cFirst it was make a photo,\u201d Spiegel says, characterizing the way people would visit a studio akin to the one we\u2019re in now for a formal sitting. \u201cThen it was take a photo,\u201d as portable cameras let people capture casual snapshots. \u201cAnd finally it became give a photo,\u201d starting with instant Polaroids handed to friends at a party and evolving into smartphone cameras that let you zip your selfie to anyone on the planet.<\/span><\/p>\n

As Guggenheim snaps photos of Spiegel and me, Spiegel demonstrates Spectacles to him, careful to hide the still-top-secret product from pedestrians wandering by outside. Though he calls it a toy, Spectacles also seems like a Trojan horse for Spiegel\u2019s vision of the future: a way of taking photographs that is more natural, as the wearer turns reflexively to look at items of interest. The resulting scenes, he hopes, will feel less like bland camera-phone snippets than like an archive of memories. Or dreams.<\/span><\/p>\n

Beyond the images it produces, a wearable camera also knows a lot about what you\u2019re doing in any given moment: which person you\u2019re looking at, which product you\u2019re browsing in a store window, whether the sky is blue or gray. It might guess what you need before you ask for it. In a tech scrum where fighting for a share of people\u2019s daily video consumption is a zero-sum game, using the camera like this opens up fresh commercial possibilities.<\/span><\/p>\n

When Spiegel warms to a subject that excites him, as Spectacles does, he often breaks into a giggle. \u201cWhen you played that song the other day,\u201d Spiegel says to Guggenheim, still jazzed but shifting topics, \u201ceverything hit me, and it blew my mind. I listened to it again yesterday, and everything came together.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Guggenheim walks to his computer and starts to play the song again, \u201cLittle Room,\u201d by the White Stripes:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Well you\u2019re in your little room <\/span>
\nand you\u2019re working on something good<\/span>
\nbut if it\u2019s really good<\/span>
\nyou\u2019re gonna need a bigger room<\/span>
\nand when you\u2019re in the bigger room <\/span>
\nyou might not know what to do<\/span>
\nyou might have to think<\/span>
\nof how you got started<\/span>
\nsitting in your little room\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

“It\u2019s everything I\u2019ve been thinking about,\u201d says Spiegel, in wonderment. \u201cLiterally, I was thinking about when we started Snapchat, all of us sitting at the dining room table. And I was thinking, How do you access that little room inside the big room? How do you build the little room inside the big room?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As Snapchat opens doors to ever bigger rooms, it will face stiffer competition. Implacable gargantuans like Facebook will continue to war with it. Both professionally and personally, this is a moment of transition for Spiegel\u2014launching a new product, proposing to his girlfriend and battling rival companies while fast becoming a CEO celebrity. If Snapchat\u2019s core concepts are privacy, connection, creativity and ephemerality, it occurs to me that those are precisely the themes that must be weighing on Spiegel right now.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAre you having fun?\u201d asks Guggenheim.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI am having the best time,\u201d Spiegel says, and the laughter starts again.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/strong> : http:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/snapchat-releases-first-hardware-product-spectacles-1474682719<\/span><\/p>\n

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