[ot-caption title=”An initial render of Snap’s Spectacles with the camera on the left side and the indicator on the opposite side. (via Spectacles)”]

A few weeks ago on September 24th, the company that built the wildly successful and popular social media app Snapchat came out with two exciting announcements. First, CEO Evan Spiegel revealed that the company would change its name from Snapchat Inc. to just Snap Inc. in order to accommodate the second announcement, Spectacles. Spectacles are Snap’s first hardware product and are smart sunglasses with an integrated camera. Seeing as the company is no longer a single product company, with the deviation away from just the mobile app Snapchat, Snap Inc. shifted its name accordingly. The main question that arises regarding these sunglasses is whether they will be accepted by modern society and prove successful after the failure of Google’s attempt at the glasses space with Google Glass, which was terminated a year ago. [spacer height=”20px”]

Spectacles is geared to take a markedly different angle from Google’s Glass. Like Snapchat itself, Spectacles will have a very social aspect to them, with the focus being the integrated camera as well as the incorporation of sharing into the lives of the users more seamlessly and effortlessly than ever before. The idea is to capture moments from the point of view of the person experiencing it without encumbering that viewer like phones and cameras have increasingly done in the modern age of hypersharing. It will record video in 10 second to 30 second segments, which will be shared to the user’s phone via wifi or bluetooth automatically. Or, the videos will be cached on the glasses themselves, transferred when available, and finally shared on Snapchat. Google Glass was notorious for its social backlash and consequential banning at many restaurants because of the perceived lack of privacy felt by others since its camera could have conceivably been recording without anybody noticing. One can argue that the same could occur with smartphones that have high-quality cameras, but phones must be orientated in a certain manner that can still be recognized by nearby people, and that was not necessary with Google Glass. Snap and Evan Spiegel hope to overcome this with a light indicator on the opposite side of the sunglass frame from the camera that lights up when video is being recorded. [spacer height=”20px”]

Style and design were also seen as some of the crippling features of Glass, as it was so evidently a piece of computing hardware rather than chic fashion. This is not the case for Snap’s Spectacles, which resemble something out of the now trending collection of eyeglass maker Warby Parker. Ultimately, it will take time to tell whether Spectacles (in their three distinct colors: orange, blue, and black) will be able to take off in the same manner that the wildly successful app Snapchat did. However, it would seem that if any company was positioned to bring about a revolution in human social perception of sharing and constant connectivity, (now through sunglasses, too) it would be Snap Inc.[spacer height=”20px”]

Sources: Snap Inc., The Verge

Photo Source: Spectacles