Snapchat Rebrands to Snap Inc.; CEO Evan Spiegel Launches Google Glass-like Short Video Recording ‘Spectacles’ For $129
Quick photo and video sharing have become extremely attractive these days, where users can send temporary photos and videos to their friends and family. Snapchat brought that revolution and others quickly started copying the idea.
In a report by Wall Street Journal, Snapchat has been renamed to Snap Inc. to align with its existing and future projects. Snapchat is more than just sending self-destructing photos and videos to contacts, it also offers news articles and a marketing outlet for global brands and companies.
With the rebranding comes the first hardware product from the company, called Spectacles. These are like any other usual pair of trendy sunglasses, but come with a tiny Google Glass-like camera on the sides to record anything in front of you.
The sunglasses will be available from this fall at $129.99 – in coral, teal and black colours – in the US, while the company has not outlined any plans for sales outside the US. These glasses have been touted for casual meetups, regular concerts and parties and sometimes even during runs and jogs.
What’s the hype about Snap Spectacles?
WSJ reports that 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. Since each new tap records a new video, you have to keep your finger on the glasses to completely record one video.
The sunglasses look like any other glasses, except they have a tiny camera fitted on both the sides that will record your view. To simulate your vision, the Spectacles’ camera uses a 115-degree-angle lens, wider than a typical smartphone’s and much closer to the eyes’ natural field of view. Even the video it records is a circular one.
Of course the Spectacles can be connected to your smartphone so that you can instantly share the videos with your friends. Unlike Google Glass, you won’t see any projection on the glasses and that is quite a good thing.
The Spectacles seem to be limited only to videos right now, and it’s strange that you cannot take photos and snap them to your contacts, but we think this is because a video can express a lot more than a photo. Spectacles have been in development for quite some time and Spiegel feels very strongly about a circular video frame than a rectangular one.
Other companies like Facebook and Instagram(owned by Facebook) have also recently gotten into photo-sharing, video-sharing and memories like Snapchat and might be launching similar products in the coming months to take on Snap Inc.
Source: WSJ
