David Brown

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.

No pun intended.

Initial reviews of Spectacles are optimistic.

The feeling of lightness and whimsy Snap is cultivating with the 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 did, no equivalent Snap-hole narrative emerges.

At least not right away.

10 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.

The 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?

Will people start getting used to the camera-first future Wired predicts?

Or will the novelty soon wear off?

Unfortunately for Snap, the buzz around spectacles is short-lived.

By October 2017, 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.