Snapchat launches the LeSpecs version of Google Glass

Remember in 2002 when people started walking around with BlueTooth mobile headsets and looked like a complete tool?

Remember in 2014 when Google Glass did the same, but the product had reports of catching fire?

Remember last month when Apple launched the AirPod wireless earphones? Let's see how many people lose these...

Now, despite these pieces of technology demonstrating ground-breaking thinking, they just didn't really look that good, did they?

This weekend, the Venice based company, Snapchat, rebranded to "Snap Inc" and announced it's first piece of hardware, the $129.99 video-capturing sunglasses to reflect it's new direction of not just being a social media company, but capable of much more. Snapchat has been testing earlier versions of the products, called "Spectacles" (I personally would have called them "Snaptacles" but that's probably why I'm writing an article about it instead of making millions off them...) since early 2015 and the company plans to sell a limited distribution in the coming months.

The (ill-names) Spectacles can do the following:

• Record video by tapping a record button on the hinge of the frames, which contains a small camera.
• Record 10 seconds of video with each tap recording a new clip
• The camera has a 115 degree angle lens, which is wider than what humans normally see, so it's kinda like a smaller version of a panorama shot.
• Videos can be posted wirelessly to Snapchat via the users smartphone.
• They will come in three colours: coral, black and teal (matching lipstick not recommended)

Snap Inc, the renamed Snapchat, boasts nearly 150 million daily active users and recently closed a $1.8 billion funding round in May, when investors valued the company at about $18 billion. Snap is in track to reach nearly $1 billion in global advertising sales in 2017 (they've just launched their local office here in Sydney with an all star team) up from the estimated $366.7 million in revenue this year according to eMarketer. By comparison, Facebook-owned Instagram (with 500 million users, a third of Snap), will generate $1.5 billion in global ad sales this year and $2.8 billion in 2017.

The Snap ad business launched mid-2015 with ads in the "Discover" and "Stories" sections as well as paid for geo-filters and lenses (the things that use augmented reality to make your face look hilarious). Snap's Discover section features articles and videos from more than a dozen publishers like CNN, iHeart Radio and Cosmopolitan, which generates nearly half the company's total US ad revenue.

So, how on Earth will a few limited edition glasses selling at $129.99 help contribute to this rise? Well, the probably won't at first, but they look awesome. They don't resemble any of the aforementioned BlueTooth Headsets, Google Glass or AirPods and could be one of the very few 'wearables' that actually make it to mainstream society. The design of the Spectacles appears to have been designed with the intent for actual humans wearing them as an actual accessory - they look great. Instead of making something that obviously stands out as a piece of wearable, potentially intrusive technology, they could easily be a regular pair of fashionable sunglasses. They really could become the LeSpecs of the wearable technology market and actually crack into mainstream society.

It will be very interesting to not only see how this new product goes when it launches, but if it does end up becoming a mainstream technology, will be interesting to see how it comes to test issues of privacy, consent and ethics when it comes to the ease at which it captures the world of the user. I guess that's a future government problem, but could fast become a legal minefield in a small matter of times.