Image and instant messaging firm Snapchat has launched sunglasses with a built-in camera called "Spectacles," which is somewhat reminiscent of Google's ill-fated "Google Glass," and has renamed itself because of this shift in product emphasis.
From now on, the company will be known as "Snap, Inc.," which is more in tune with its Spectacles eyewear that takes video only 10 seconds long. Spectacles' snaps are the image version of the self-destructing Snapchat images we've grown used to since 2011 when Snapchat was founded by three geeks from Stanford.
The name change is interesting because it illustrates a change in focus away from messaging, which makes sense with Spectacles. Snap is more about life-logging, content generation and story-telling than about ephemeral photos.
Spectacles hope to avoid Google Glass' sad fate by looking like ordinary sunglasses except for the tiny camera lens atop the left side lens. Snap isn't treating Spectacles as a major hardware launch. It sees the product as a fun toy with a limited market.
"If you look at the kinds of glasses millennials wear, the design is very 'in'," said Carolina Milanesi, a consumer technology analyst from Creative Strategies, a market research firm in Silicon Valley that's part of the Spectacles team.
"Making them sunglasses helps hide the camera better, but it also limits the usage somewhat. You'll need to be outside in daylight."
Explaining the creative flash that led to the development of Spectacles and the renaming of the company, Snapchat's founder, Evan Spiegel, said it was triggered by nature trek where he saw his own memory, through his own eyes.
"It's one thing to see images of an experience you had, but it's another thing to have an experience of the experience. It was the closest I'd ever come to feeling like I was there again," he said.