Meta Ray Ban Stories and AI

Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of businessus wars ad free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app It's twenty twenty five in Nairobi, Kenya A data labeler clocks in for his shift, lets out a heavy sigh. He does not want to be here this morning He walks into a large room lined with rows of workers tapping away at computer terminals. He logs in, opens a program, and starts to watch a woman get undressed She seems totally unaware that anyone might be viewing her But this data worker can see everything because the video is being streamed live from a pair of metaglasses sitting on her nightstand, a continent away The Kenyan man works for a data labeling company called SAMA, a corporation that supplies the human labor behind the so called autonomous machine learning at the heart of AI Every day, in ten hour shifts, his job is to review unfiltered video content and label what he sees by drawing bounding boxes around the images on the screen He draws one box around a cluster of pixels and labels it a lamp draws another box and labels that a bookcase. He's training the AI to recognize everyday items so the algorithm can get better at doing it in the future The labeling work is low paid and repetitive That isn't the worst part Because this man doesn't just see lamps and bookcases He often finds himself reviewing sensitive or graphic video content the woman undressing He sees strangers' credit card numbers He sees people having sex. He even sees crimes being committed All of it captured in first person video streamed by the people who have no idea they're broadcasting their lives to the cloud, muchuch less that it's being reviewed by a human. And more and more of this footage now seems to be coming from One device Meta's Ray band glasses You might know them as meta smart glasses or Ma AI glasses black frames equipped with a tiny built in camera and a voice enabled AI assistant that can describe what you're seeing, play your favorite music, and more. Wearable technology is designed to be seamless painless and Normal Meta designed its ray bands to blend into the background and become part of your daily life And in that way, It's succeeded where almost every other Smart Glasses product has failed Meta's Raybands are the first tech enabled Iyear. to truly break through in the consumer market. But in going mainstream Meta has also created something troubling A tool that may be enabling mass surveillance buuilt by one of the world's most notorious data brokers So What happens next I'm Leon Nafo What happens when only fans becomes more than just a side hustle Only fantasy is an in depth look at the world's newest professional how the rules of human intimacy are being rewritten onine Listen wherever you get your podcasts, or binge all episodes of Only Fantasy, ad free, only on Audible Whether you are exploring your fascinations or discovering new ones, Ottawa has stories that will introduce you to your most fascinating self. Tap into a whole new world of heated conversations with a saucy romantasy series. Know how true the latest blockbuster movie stayed to the sci fi story it was based on, or find unexpected reveals through an exclusive trrue Crime podcast However you listen, Audible keeps you fascinated so you can be just as fascinating. Select any audio book every month, plus exclusive podcasts. pllans now start at eight dollars ninety nine c. Audible. Be fascinated, be fascinating For Mariple Originals, I'm David Bown and this is business wars Smart glasses with superhan abilities have been part of the public's imagination for generations Think of those X ray specs a kid in the nineteen fifties could order from the back pages of a comic book And they've been an obsession of the big tech companies since at least the early twenty thousand ten s But getting smart glasses right proven surprisingly hard The most notorious example was Google Glass, a product that was massively over hyped before going very wrong. glass crashed and burned so spectacularly that some believe it's set the entire category back by a half a decade afterfter that flame outount. Tech giants like Google, Apple, and Meta seem to pivot They focus their hardware efforts on high priced high tech virtual reality headsets, designed for gaming, entertainment And of course, the metaverse But now, the metaverse has collapsed And smart glasses have made a comeback notot by doing more by doing less The proof is in the numbers. Sales of meta ray bands have more than tripled in a single year In twenty twenty five alone. Meta sold eight million pairs People seem to actually want these devices and in cracking that code. Meta has finally solved a puzzle that eluded its fiercest competitors and its own research division For more than a decade Now that smart glasses are everywhere The competition isn't far behind And neither are the questions. Uurgent, uncomfortable ones about the mandatory sharing of user data to the cloud. The exploitation of human workers in the global South and government overreach, including reports about IC agents using the glasses illegally So if smart glasses are really here to stay question becomes Is that a good thing This is episode one Fyes on the eyes It's twenty eleven and an overcast day on the Stanford campus in Palo Alto, California Students John Rodriguez and Eric Miller stand on an elevated walkway and nod to their cameraman to start recording. They're making a pitch video hoping to get their startup, Virgence Labs into a prestigious Stanford incubator called StartX Acceptance into this accelerator can unlock everything for young founders mentorship Buzz and funding for whatever they can dream up Miller speaks to the camera first He's got sandy hair, a round boyish face Black frameed glasses In his hands, he's holding a bulky black visor with a face shield and several wires sticking out It looks like a cross between a welder's mask and Darth Vader's helmet This is a protype of a wearable computer that we built that has immersive hemispherical objects and it is running Android And when you look through it It does facial recognition Miller passes the helmet to Rodriguez, who has a long face, unruly black hair and a wide grin when he gets excited. Right, so the prototype software that I've written is first of all really awesome. So to redefine the future of face to face interactions, the software that I've writtenks in realalime talks to a cloud service to identify the person that I'm interacting with based on my facebook friends You heard that right. Miller and Rodriguez are pitching facial recognition goggles in twenty eleven, long before anyone had heard of Meta Raybans or Google Glass Their software leverages Facebook's existing facial recognition tech, which has been around since twenty ten, helping users quickly tag their friends in photos. But their visor promises to bring this facial recognition into real world interactions delivering a live, augmented reality experience It sounds and looks like something out of a sci fi movevie. But on the bright side, it's unlikely that you'd miss someone coming at you with a giant visor on their face So at least it won't be happening in secret But Miller and Rodriguez aren't done Next, they talk about the second prototype they're developing product that isn't immediately visible That is until Miller removes the simple black framed glasses he's been wearing and holds him up to the camera, showing off the hidden tech inside And these basses have a video recording device in them and a little video processing board with the SD card And in a USB, slots, plug in and recharge your computer And so these glasses can be used to capture your experience and capture your first person point of view perspective And and then share it socially online. Miller and Rodriguez call this product They're social video glasses The idea behind these glasses is simple They record whatever you're seeing Either for posterity or to live stream on your social feed without you ever needing to pick up your smartphone or a GoPro The inventors envisioned these low key glasses folding seamlessly into everyday life. They may not realize it yet But Miller and Rodriguez's two distinct prototypes, the helmet and the glasses foreshadow the two diverging paths that will define tech enabled wearables. For the next decade One gives you high tech high output features It's essentially a computer system strapped to your head the other simpler, less ambitious tech that doesn't look like tech at all O's high profile Once low profile One's maximalist The otherth is minimalist question is Which one will be the more lucrative path forward Rodriguez and Miller's pitch works Virgin's Labs gets selected for the Stanford Incubator class of twenty twelve Unfortunately, acceptance does not lead to easy funding for their prototypes Miller, the CEO, finds it hard to raise money for wearables because in late twenty eleven, most of these ses are focused on mobile apps like Uber, WhatsApp or Instagram No one really wants to bet on a high tech helmet So it's dead Miller and Rodriguez focus on their more modest prototype the glasses without investor backing Virgin slabs turns to crowdfunding post their smart glasses which they call epiphany Iy weear to the Indie Googa platform and to their delight It works Tiffany Eywear manages to raise seventy thousand dollars to develop the glasses for commercial sale People seem genuinely interested in the product And it's easy to see why The glasses? Well, they look almost exactly like a pair of black raybands The camera's so well hidden at the top right corner. You barely notice it's there Which makes a compelling use case for everyday people The crowdfunding' success finally earns Virgin' Lab some attention from the VC crowd, including from Adam Draper, son of notable VC Tim Draper and from Charlie Chever, co founder of the online platform Quora These guys make moves Silicon Valley notices Within a year Dergence is taking pre orders on their website The site boasts a hype video on its home page, featuring high profile tech riders and Silicon Valley execs trying on the glasses and Saying nice things and at twenty nine seconds in A familiar face pops up It's a pale white man with curly light brown hair, grinning at the camera as he holds the epiphany glasses in his hands. caption reads Awesome. This is awesome and it's attributed. to Mark Zuckerberg. Founder and CEO of Facebook At this time, getting an endorsement from Zuck is like receiving a blessing from the Pope twenty eight year old Zuckerberg is the most powerful social media mogul in the world Facebook is just eight years old, with annualized revenue of over a billion dollars. and a recent IPO that raised sixteen billion The Hollywood movie Imortalizing Facebook's founding was recently nominated for eight Oscars Zuckerberg is on top of the world and moving fast, having just bought Instagram for one billion dollars, in what will become a signature move for him When you see competition buuy it Now, if you're wondering how Virgin's Labs got their product into Zuck's hands They had their methods The early Virgginence team includes a couple of former Facebook employees, including their investor Charlie Chever. Co founder John Rodriguez briefly interned at Facebook before quitting to build Virgence full time And Eric Miller. Well, he used to stalk the Facebook parking lot hoping to catch Zuckerberg and pitch him on the way to his car But despite all of these connections, Zuckerberg doesn't seem to give epiphany Iyewear much thought At least not beyond giving the glasses a Hasty thumbs up in a photo He's got bigger fish to fry. Like investing in Facebook's algorithmic news feed and in social gaming like Farmville and collecting data from Facebook's more than one billion global users So It's entirely possible he forgot all about these social video glasses that look like classic black framed Raybandans On the other hand It's also entirely possible he filed them away in the back of his mind as an idea to come back to later. It's february twenty twelve in Mountain View, California And Google co founder Sergei Bren is agitated He stalks through the hallways of GoogleX, the top secret research and development lab affectionately known as the company's Moonshot Factory. or at least GoogleX used to beat top secret until reporters from the New York Times blew its cover A few months ago, the Times ran a feature on Google X after speaking with a dozen mostly unnamed employees about the type of moonshot projects they were working on The list included far out purely theoretical concepts like space elevators that could send cargo to a space station without a rocket But it also included projects a lot closer to fruition like The fleet of driverless cars that will one day become Google's Waymo You might think Breren would be pleased. The article paints Google as a relentlessly innovative and future focused company But for Bren The piece also put an unspoken clock on GoogleX Now the word is out. He feels pressured to produce something newsworthy and amazing. His co founder, Larry Page is laser focused on driverless cars Bn He's obsessed with a different project a pair of tech enabled smart glasses that will free us from the bending, craning posture of constantly looking down at our phones These smart glasses would do much more than just record video. pictures. Use voice commands, search, and essentially bring the functionality of a smartphone into the user's field of vision using what's known as a head up display Head upp displays were first developed in the nineteen forties to help fighter pilots see their control panels without having to look away from the sky Now. Ben wants to bring this idea to anyone who's ever found themselves bent down over a screen instead of engaging with a world in front of them Ran wants to move beyond just recording his ideal glasses will transform every day into an augmented reality or AR experience You could use the glasses to interrogate your surroundings in real time Google them, process them, or just stream them to a friend. Terminator Vision from the movies onlyn less focused on apprehending John Connor in a way This is what the Virgins Labs guys from Stanford originally envisioned before their funding challenges made them scale things back Remember that facial recognition helmet That was augmented reality If Virgence had been fully funded right away They would have tried to add those elements to their smart glasses, but they had to put their AR dreams aside Google, on the other hand, has had no such problems. It has moonshot money Anything anyone wants to dream up, it can at least try to create Delivering an AR future becomes Bryin's passion project. Let Larry Page have his driverless cars He wants these glasses Bin assembles a wearables super squad hiring scientists who are expert in body worn computers Initially The Wearables team is given the luxury of working at the pace of discovery with no hard deadlines But after the New York Times piece exposes Google X That changes Ren desperately wants to produce something incredible He wants to bring these AR glasses to market doneone the world. whether or not they're ready for their close up Whether you're exploring your current fascinations or discovering new ones, Audible has all the stories that'll introduce you to your most fascinating self. Tap into a whole new world of heated conversations with a Sucy romantasy series. Become your friend group's sci fi expert on the latest blockbuster book to screen adaptation Or find unexpected reveals through the exclusive episodes of a viral true crime podcast. However you choose to listen, Audible keeps you fascinated, so you can be just as fascinating. All in one easy app, with plans now starting at eight do ninety nine cents, you'll get access to over one million audioob books and podcasts, including trending bestsellers the hottest new releases and exclusive podcasts you won't find anywhere else. Sign up now to become a member and get any audio book every month Plus exclusive podcasts. plans now start at eight dollars ninety nineents Be fascinated, be fascinating I'm Leon Nefo best known as the co creator of Slowburn and Fiasco. I had of course heard of O fans, but always with a distant and quiet skepticism. A silent judgment, you might say Who is actually using this platform? U I am Hi, I'm Oly Fans creator and comedian Gracie Kanan. I work from home now I'm on Oly Fans and In case you guys don't know what Oie fans is, ask your husband. My journalistic curiosity got the best of me when I found out that my own sister had started an Only Fans account. I'm not a sister, just to clarify. It turns out a lot of what I thought I knew about OnlyFans was wrong I felt like I wasted three point five years for something that wasn't real What happens when connection comes with a price tag? Listen to Only Fantasy wherever you get your podcasts, or binge all episodes of Only Fantasy ad free right now, only on Audible. Start your Audible subscription in the Audible app or on Apple podcasts It's june twenty twelve in San Francisco. The Masconi center is packed. Google's IO confonerence, the company's annual conference for developers, is in full swing And backstage, Sergey Brynn is hacing In his black pants and black long sleeve tee, he could pass for a stage handand, except for the pair of charcoal colored asymmetric glasses balanced on his nose As he walks back and forth, he waits for his cue, and then he hears it Google's VP of Engineering says the words new features Bren bounds on stage and interrupts even though this interruption is something they've rehearsed many times. Weve got something pretty special for you. It's a little bit time sensitive, so I apologize for interrupting. You've seen some really compelling demos here. They were slick, they were robust. U This is going be nothing like that This can go wrong in about five hundred different ways. So tell me now, whoo wants to see a demo of glass But the uncertainty in Bryn's voice isn't entirely an act As he speaks, he knows that a blimp full of skydivers is circling about a mile over their heads He's keeping contact with him through his Google Glass headset, which communicates with their headset A live stream appears on the screen behind Bin. The skydivers and their aircraft are broadcasting live to the stage, and they keep broadcasting even as they jump into the open air The audience watches in amazement as the skydivers get closer and closer to the ground broadcasting their POV through their glasses The effect makes the viewers also feel like they're plunging toward the Earth When the divers land safely on the Lasconei center roof, their cameras keep going The audience watches as the divers rael down the side of the building Pop on some bikes and peddal triumphantly into the theater before embracing Bryinn on stage Google's strange asymmetric glasses captured every second of it The demo is a success Gin can finally breathe a sigh of relief But that feeling doesn't last for long Dbut in Google Glass with a skydiving stunt was a masterclass in generating excitement Because the Google IO confonference isn't just for developers It's also for the press And Sure enough, a wave of breathless coverage follows, recounting every heart stopping moment of the demo But on the heels of that coverage, Bren and his team face a real challenge Glass isn't ready for consumer sale Not even close Remember, Frin fast track class through the Google X Lab She was feeling pressuure to bring something astonishing to market Something that could perhaps make him the next Steve Jobs The glass still has a ton of kinks to work out on both the hardware and software side And that's before you even get into the challenge of mass production Google tries to manage expectations. It warns that glass likely won't be in retail stores for att least another two years But it also provides a tantalizing caveat comoming much sooner By the following spring Google plans to release what it's calling the Eplorer version of Gass Pice is a cool fifteen hundred dollars And it's only available to industry insiders, VIPs, and members of the elite tech press These so called explorers can sample the goods ahead of everybody else as long as they're willing Hey. There's a reason Bryin decides to roll the product out this way He strongly believes in a core tenet of software development called the minimum Viable productroduct That's the idea that getting product into your customers's hands early, even if it's imperfect is the fastest way to improve it Real users will show you which features they care about Which ones they struggle with? whichich ones they don't need at all This prevents you from developing your product in a vacuum where you run the risk of putting your time, energy, and capital In all the wrong places O course The minimum viable product strategy gets trickier when you're talking about software and hardware together And glass is both With software, it's easy to push out patches overnight and fix bugs along the way With hardware bug in the form factor or the physical material is much harder to fix actually You know what? I'll take this proposition a step further and say the minimum viable product idea doesn't have a winning track record it comes to expensive hardware Much less hardware worn on the face Pt pretty unforiving place for mistakes This much is certain, however If your early users feel like beta testers paying premium prices for the privilege Well Resentment can kick in. Bread fast What works for apps backfire pretty badly for physical products Bren figures the Explorers program is a way for Google to have its cake and eat it too. If it only rolls out glass to select people Repairing any hardware issues should be more manageable And since the explorers know they're getting the earliest version They won't be so upset if something goes wrong These folks are the early adopters, the people who get excited about trying the latest gadget and testing its limits Even the name explorers gestures at diving into the unknown Those skydivers getting ready to land on a roof The Explorers program also lets Google stay exclusive Because so few will be available, demand will be sky high. Friends hope is that glass will become as coveted as the next iPhone. Precisely because it will be so hard to get And while Brnn is busy making glass the most talked about gadget in Silicon Valley A much smaller team is watching all of this very carefully and wondering If they might be sitting on something Bin doesn't have It's march twenty fourteen downtown Los Angeles. dense, gritty section of the city In the cramped, overcrowded offices of Virgin's Labs The mood is tense The air smmelled like cooking oil from the Indian restaurant on the building's first floor and the constant wail of sirens from the police precinct across the street keeps interrupting their work It's been around eighteen months since their crowdfunding campaign put Virgin slabs on the map But the company can still only afford to employ about ten people CEO Eric Miller has been pushing everyone to the limit tryrying to get their sole product epiphany Iear Off the ground Virggins was able to build their first generation smart classes As a direct to consumer product in twenty thirteen and early reviews were positive But despite some favorable press Epiphany glasses have been totally overshadowed by the launch of Google Glass. Few people outside the tech world even know epiphany glasses exist Virgins. needs a partner to help them scale They won't survive much longer business can be right about the future and still lose for lack of scale Timing, capital, and distribution often matter as much as invention Small firms frequently assume superior ideas will attract rescue capital automatically. Sure, being early is valuable But only if you can stay alive long enough to matter The team is working hard when the office door flies open Miller enters in a jubilant mood, his boyish face lit up in a smile He's got news And it's big Hey guys, I know I've been driving you pretty hard lately Say that again Yeah, I know that's fair, but it's all about to be worth it We've been acquired. We have. By whom? I can't tell you. What? That's crazy How much is the sale for tell you that either Come on, Eric. This whole company is like nine people, who are we gonna tell Okay, but you need to promise to keep it secret. We're not doing a press release, not putting anything on the buyer's website or ours. The guy in charge is very private, okay? Is everyone sitting down Finally, Miller forks over the details Virgin Sabs is about to be acquired by Snapchat The buuzzy social media company that features disappearing photos and videos Snapchat's twenty four year old founder and CEO Evan Spiegel, has agreed to pay Virgence's eleven million dollars in cash and four million doars in stock to develop epiphany smart glasses under the Snapchat banner It will be Snapchat's first foray into hardware of any kind It marks a brand new direction for a company that's always defied expectations Just one year earlier in twenty thirteen, Spiegel had stunned the entire industry when he reportedly turned down Mark Zuckerberg's offer to buy his company billion dollars and absorb it into Facebook people said Spiegel was out of his mind for turning down this offer After all, it's three times what Zuckerberg pay for Instagram And Zuckerberg does not take rejection well either In fact, after being rebuffed by Speakgel Zuck turned around and bought WhatsApp for nineteen billion dollars some would say started plotting his revenge. You can hear about that bruising battle in our Facebook versus Snapchat series But all that's still to come Right now Spagl knows this much for sure He wants to get into the smart glasses game and to do that. He needs Virgins You might be wondering Why would Spiegel want to pursue this tricky sector now After all the conversation around tech enabled eyear has been entirely dominated by glass And the results have been mixed at best Initially, Glass got off to a promising start. In late twenty twelve, fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg incorporated a few pairs into her runway show Shortly thereafter, Time Magazine called Glass one of twenty twelve's best inventions In spring, twenty thirteen Google started rolling out its explorer program in a handful of cities pproved purchasers could pick up their glass by appointment Only in San Francisco, New York, London, or LA The experience was high end Buyers were given drinks in the royal treatment and a personal tutorial on the complex fif five hundred dollars device Blass stayed exclusive for most of the next year too. The glasses were spotted on celebs like Oprah, Bill Murray and Beyonce, as well as world leaders like England's Prince Charles Spanish President Mariano Rojooy. Glass did briefly become available to the general public For a few isolated days in spring twenty fourteen but the relatively limited stock sold out quickly And then Blash started A small subset of glass users started getting a bad rap for their entitlement, including recording in public without permission In response Movie theaters and casinos swiftly banned the device And a salty new nickname sprung up around Silicon Valley the so called gllass hole The glasshole problem became so bad that Google itself had to issue a courtesy guide for its product urging users to always ask permission before recording It also advised you to stop spacing out and staring rudely at your display while ignoring the people around you courtesy guide didn't seem to help much In february twenty fourteen, just one week after its release tech writer named Sarah Slocam brought her glass into a punk bar called Molotovs in San Francisco's Hate Ashbury District She started filming and was soon accosted glass device ripp right off her face. Now, in march twenty fourteen, with a backlash against glassholes only growing Why would Snapchat choose to pivot to smart glasses which will theoretically have the same privacy issues Here's the thing The media's obsession with glass, both the hype backlash. M be a blessing in disguise for hopeful competitors Glasses certainly raised awareness of smart glasses as a product category And in many ways, the epiphany glasses Snapchat just bought compare favorably with its rivals Unlike glass, epiphanies are already available to the public If you want a pair, you can order them right from the company website. No appointment needed And epiphany glasses start at just three hundred dollars. compomared to the fif five hundred dollars price tag of glass while simultaneously looking far less conspicuous. Even Diane von Furstenberg couldn't disguise the fact that Google gllass looks Well A bit silly Like a Star Trek costume someone whiiffed up for comic con Epiphany glasses mean whileild look like normal raybands form factor and the low price will make epiphanies a lot more appealing. especially to Snapchats younger hippper user base The reason epiphanes can sell for this lower price point is that they don't have as many features For now at least Epipiffhany glasses are simply recording devices, not an attempt to replace your phone. They can't even take photos Just record video But interestingly, this distinction may be lost on the general public After all, most folks think recording video is all that Google's Glass can do as well Anything else is just details Snapchat's Evans Bieagle You may have snapped up epiphany at just the right time He believes the future of smart glasses is in looking boring instead of futuristic and doing less instead of more All he needs to do now is wait for glass There are people you're told to trust laawyers, teachers, especially doctors But what happens when you put your life in someone's hands and they betray you The hit podcast Doror Death is back And this season is unlike any other. Dror Death, the cowboy, is the story of a charming neurosurgeon who rode into western towns selling a persona of confidence and care He wore cowboy boots in the operating room and became sought after by patients He promised to heal them Instead, he left a trail of broken bodies This season is about a doctor who was never truly held accountable for the patients whose lives he ruined A story of greed, betrayal, and a fight for justice that will leave you questioning who to trust Listen to Dr. Death, the cowboy, wherever you get your podcasts O binge the entire series right now, only with Audible Whether you're exploring your current fascinations or discovering new ones, Audible has all the stories that'll introduce you to your most fascinating self. Tap into a whole new world of heated conversations with a Sucy romantasy series. Become your friend group's sci fi expert on the latest blockbuster book to screen adaptation Or find unexpected reveals through the exclusive episodes of a viral true crime podcast. However you choose to listen, Audible keeps you fascinated, so you can be just as fascinating. All in one easy app with plans now starting at five pounds ninety nineents, you'll get access to over nine hundred thousand audioobooks and podcasts, including trending bestestsellers, the hottest new releases, and exclusive podcasts you won't find anywhere else Sign up now to become a member and get any audiobook every month plus exclusive podcasts plans now start at five pounds ninety nine Be fascinated, be fascinating It's january twenty fifteen. The news out of Mountain view is everywhere Google is pulling glass from the market two years after its debut He plans to retool the product and re release it later under the guidance of legendary product designer Tony Fidel. At least glass will be in great hands Fidel helped create the iPod, the iPhone, and the home monitoring system. Nest In the announcement, Google tries to put a cheery face on this decision After all Fidel is design royalty perfect choice to revamp the product. But even Fidel's name can't obscure the grim reality of this moment Less than three years after those skydivers descended on the Musconey Center Google Glass is effectively dead. And during that time The glass completely failed to hit its targets whileile Google never releases sales numbers Analysts once predicted glass sales would be in the millions by twenty sixteen. Instead Even the most aggressive estimates for actual sales bow at less than nine hundred thousand units total With many analysts agreeing the real number is probably closer to three hundred thousand So What happened Was it the glass hole effect r is something else going on twenty fifteen South by Southwest Conference The head of Google's mooonshot factactory, a man named Astro Teller. gives Glass a public autopsy. He says that glass' real problem was in everyone's heightened expectations quoting here We allowed and sometimes even encouraged too much attention to the program We did things to encourage people to think this was a finished product His take Llass just wasn't ready for prime time It wasn't that people didn't like glass, as he sees it, It was that they didn't ever get to experience glass in its full glory Still One question hangs over the obituaries for glass. Is this a death bllow to wearables as a category for a win for Google's competitors who might be developing devices of their own. folks at Snapchat are about to find out It's november tenth, twenty sixteen Across the US. headlines are dominated by election news But if you're looking for a distraction and you live near Venice Beach, You can take a stroll along the boardwalk, where you'll find a single gleaming yellow vending machine that appeared Overnight. A long line is already formed in front of it. This yellow kiosk features a single eye on the front like a camera lens that wakes up when it senses someone walking past gives the entire Tiosk a minionesque look This is the launch of Snap's first hardware product Camera enabled sunglasses, it's calling Spectacles whichich is fitting because this entire launch is designed for maximum spectacle Spepectacles were first announced back in September Alongside the news that Snapchat would be rebranding as Snap Inc to reflect a company that includes more offerings than just its app, which seems important. becausecause just one month earlier Snap's rial Facebook unveiled Instagram stories brazened and aggressive copycat of Snapchat's entire format Just like Snapchat, InstA's stories are short videos that disappear after twenty four hours from a person's feed feels like Snaps payback for refusing to sell to Facebook. to imitate Snap into irrelevance So now, there's extra pressure on this spectacles launch. CEO Evan Spiegel now twenty six tells the Wall Street Journal that he's operating on a principle of measure a thousand times cut once Unlike glass. This rollout can't be hasty In fact Everything about spectacles feels in direct opposition to glass Instead of a futuristic looking headband, These sunglasses look like novelty shades you might pick up at a gas station Though, they're definitely sturdier. They have round circular frames that come in three colors with a small yellow circle at each temple marking the cameras and a light to show that you're recording Instead of fif thousand five hundred dollars, these glasses cost just one hundred and thirty dollars, less than a tenth of the price. That price point puts spectacles in easy reach of Snap users, most of whom are teens and young twenty somethingings Rather than promise the world These glasses promise simplicity Video recordings that max out at thirty seconds long The video will be captured in a circular frame, which Spiegel says is closer to human vision. The footage gets uploaded right to a folder in Snapchat for easy editing and posting And then there are the vending machines which like Snapchat's patented disappearing photos and videos go away after twenty four hours The kiosks literally moved to a new location the next day which Snap users can track through an online map. The disappearing kiosk strategy is Bon, quirky and the polar opposite of the tony Google Glass experience with its White glove service and appointment times booked months in advance Snap is still doing a limited rollout, but Unlike glass This one is no longer centered around the elite be more populist than a vending machine And what seems cosmetic may really be strategic Google made access feel elite and technical, but Snap, made access feel Playful and casual Same broad category radically different emotional experience And customers often decide whether something is for them before they judge the specs unintended Initial reviews of spectacles are optimistic The feeling of lightness and whimsy snap is cultivating with a low price and friendly looking yellow vending machines seems to translate to Snap's target market. And despite the fact that spectacles have the exact same capacity for creepy behavior and unauthorized recording the glass dip No equivalent snap hole narrative emerges At least not right away Ten days after the launch Wired writes a glowing feature with a title Snap's spectacles are the beginning of a camera first future They interview a content creator who hosts an online prank show who freely confesses to filming people with his spectacles while putting a small piece of electrical tape over the glass's recording light. so he can comfortably film in secret Here's a snippet of that content How I get ns with Just hell. Yeah wait. been saf Am I a snapschat? No He said of's not that' not. P fil of here. person being filmed is obviously uncomfortable But instead of ripping the glasses off the prankster's face, he laughs it off. Will this good humor persist around spectacles People start getting used to the camera first future wired predicts Or will the novelty soon wear off Unfortunately for Snap buuzz around spectacles is short lived. By october twenty seventeen, nearly a year after those yellow vending machines first appeared on Venice Beach, sales are slumping. And so is demand The influencers who embraced spectacles start moving on to the next trend which is what influencers do and the broader public's appetite for spectacles never really develops. Despite Snap adding the product to e commerce sites like Amazon as well as expanding to European markets, Total sales of spectacles since launch come in at around one hundred fifty thousand units And while Evan Spiegel points out that one hundred fifty thousand units is better than Apple's first year selling the iPod Others counter that these numbers aren't as good as those of Google's Glass By November, spectacles are declared a flop having lost the company around forty million dollars. To be clear, Snap doesn't stop making them In fact, SnP releases a new version in twenty eighteen with a whole host of quality improvements Spectacles are soon more or less forgotten by the mainstream public The verdict is in These glasses were a fad. Not a forever product