After debuting exclusively inside special pop-up vending machines last year, Snapchat has today begun selling its video-recording Spectacles online for $129.99. Like in the vending machines, the Spectacles come in Coral, Black and Teal, and include a charging case and cable. At the time of writing, shipping estimates sit at a delivery time within the next 2-4 weeks.
Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel said that the response to the Spectacles has been positive ever since the vending machines began appearing in California and New York. But, as TechCrunch uncovered in Snap's IPO filing, the company mentioned that "the launch of Spectacles . . . has not generated significant revenue for us." The filing further stated: "We expect to experience production and operating costs related to Spectacles that will exceed the related revenue in the near future."
“As Evan shared in his interview with the WSJ, when we launched, the idea was : ‘We’re going to take a slow approach to rolling them out,’ says Spiegel. ‘It’s about us figuring out if it fits into people’s lives and seeing how they like it.’ Response has been positive since November’s launch so we’re now happy to be able to make Spectacles more readily available — especially for those in the US who have not been able to make it to a Snapbot.”
When synced with the Snapchat mobile app, users can tap a button on Spectacles to begin recording a ten-second video, which is saved in the "Memories" section of the app and can be revisited and posted to their Story. Even though distribution has been added online, Snapchat said that customers can still expect the vending machines to appear at random new locations in the future, after they have a "brief nap."
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