Sunday Snapshot 09/25/16

Surprise and spectacle: Snapchat has a long track record of making moves that confuse and even frustrate observers and pundits. At first, many argued it was an app designed only for bad behavior, and dismissed it as little more than a short-term phenomenon with a faintly shady vibe since its user base skewed younger. Even now, while its popularity and ephemeral appeal are generally accepted as due to more than just an interest in sexting, critics of the app still find its UI and UX decisions baffling.

And yet, Snapchat has managed to continue to expand its appeal and grow its user base. It does so with acquisitions and feature introductions that seem, initially, bizarre – its live video facial manipulation features initially struck many as creepy. And acquisitions like Bitmoji struck a chord with users in a big way, even if the app's goofy emoji creation mechanic seemed like a better for fit for soccer moms on Facebook than for Snapchat's millennial milieu.

Snapchat's latest act might be its most controversial move yet; it's actually not even Snapchat anymore, as the company has rebranded as "camera"-focused Snap, Inc., and debuted its first hardware, Snapchat Spectacles. The device is a $130 pair of sunglasses with an embedded video camera that can take 10 second video for sharing via Snapchat, without requiring you to take our your phone. The sunglasses shoot circular video, too, which makes it easy to view cropped in either portrait or landscape orientation on your mobile device.

My gut reaction to Spectacles, upon seeing them adorning Spiegel's face in brooding black and white as shot by Karl Lagerfeld for the Wall Street Journal (yes that's all real), was that this was a foolhardy endeavor. It seemed likely to rehash all the complaints people had about Google Glass, but with a company even more unfamiliar with actually building great hardware. Plus, it actually focuses on one of the things about Google Glass that unnerved people most – its always-available camera.

But history, as detailed above, has shown that it's never wise to take a Snapchat product decisions at face value, or to trust that instinct derived from years of observing other tech companies will apply to Spiegel et al. Snap's clearly betting big on Spectacles beyond the expiry of this initial spectacle – a new company name, and moving Snapchat's status to simply it's flagship product proves that. I still wouldn't go so far to say Spectacles will be a definite success, but Snap's oddball history means it'd be foolish not to be open to the possibility.