David Brown

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 150,000 units.

And while Evan Spiegel points out that 150,000 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 $40 million.

To be clear, Snap doesn't stop making them.

In fact, Snap releases a new version in 2018 with a whole host of quality improvements.

But spectacles are soon more or less forgotten by the mainstream public.

The verdict is in.

These glasses were a fad, not a forever product.

They were too quirky, too fun to be taken seriously.

While Google Glass may have tried to do too much, perhaps Spectacles tried to do too little.

I'm not going to lie, I'm getting a lot of Segway vibes here.

You remember Segway?

The self-balancing scooter we were promised that would transform transportation here on Earth?

One of the hardest questions in innovation or in business more broadly is whether customers truly want a product or merely want to try it out.

Early sales can be driven by curiosity, gifting, hype, or fear of missing out.

None of those are the same as lasting demand, continued use, word of mouth, people replacing the product when it wears out.

If enthusiasm fades after the first unboxings,

The market's probably smaller than the creator's conviction.

It's September 2021, and Facebook has a big announcement.