Snap To It

Snapchat Has Rebranded to Snap Inc., Is Now Selling Sunglasses

The CEO explained that the company is more than just an app now.
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By Carl Court/Getty Images

Snapchat is growing stronger. In an announcement on their brand-new website, it was revealed that the company has changed its name to Snap Inc. because, according to CEO Evan Spiegel, Snapchat is bigger than just an app on your phone. The app itself will still be called Snapchat, but the company, with their newly launched line of video-enabled sunglasses, is more than what it once was. Spiegel said, “Now that we are developing other products, like Spectacles, we need a name that goes beyond just one product — but doesn’t lose the familiarity and fun of our team and brand.”

The new Spectacles will be available “soon” according to Spiegel’s blog post. The Wall Street Journal reports that the glasses will come in three different colors and are equipped with a tiny camera on each lens to capture video in a 115-degree field of view, the same field that the human eye has. We will use these Spectacles to create Memories, which they have also capitalized, because Snap Inc. now owns your memories too. Clearly none of Snap’s employees have seen that Black Mirror episode. Why they chose to call them “Spectacles” when we could’ve had “Snaptacles” remains a mystery.

The last time a company attempted a wearable video recording device was Google Glass, which was scrapped last year after it didn’t take off nearly as well as Google hoped it would. Google Glass was essentially a computer for your glasses, so it was a pretty expensive investment. Since their only purpose is to capture short videos, Snap’s Spectacles will only cost about $130.

Spectacles will shoot videos in a circular format, which, according to Snap, is how our eyes see. This, coupled with the ease of wearable technology (as opposed to pulling out your phone and waiting for the app to open to take a video) might make Spectacles the next hot item, but would tons of people pay that kind of money when you can have essentially the same thing for free on your smartphone?