Facebook announced that their new Ray-Ban collaboration—Ray-Ban Stories—is now available for purchase online and in retail stores in the US, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Italy, and the UK. Their “sunglasses” give their users a way to capture photos and video, share adventures, listen to music or take phone calls without using their phones—very similar to Snapchat Spectacles. If you’re unfamiliar with Snapchat Spectacles, you aren’t alone. They’re pretty un-memorable, and its appeal dimmed so quickly since its initial release in 2016. The Spectacles were described as a “more fashionable Google Glass”, but it still looked pretty tacky. Snapchat Spectacles featured a camera lens and “are capable of recording short video segments and syncing with a smartphone to upload to the user’s online account”. The smart glasses record when the user presses a button on the top left of the frame, for a maximum of 30 seconds (in 10 second intervals). They were cool in theory, but I don’t know anyone who uses Snapchat anymore besides younger users as a platform for communication—so I’m not surprised that the glasses seemed to fizzle out. So, what makes the Ray-Ban Stories different from the Snapchat ones? According to Facebook, Stories has “dual integrated 5MP cameras”, which…
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Did Facebook not learn from Snapchat Spectacles? What makes Ray-Ban Stories different …
