> Don't underestimate the power of social signaling.

You mean the social signaling that is going to brand these users as "glassholes" as well?

>At $129 this is a no-brainer.

Please step out of your tech bubble. Most snapchat users are teenagers or college-age persons who absolutely do not have $129 to drop on a pair of novelty sunglasses.

Kanye did one of his popup stores near my house recently. Line of teenagers two blocks long waiting to buy $400 T-shirts. If it's cool, they'll find the $.

Kanye is cool and his clothes have massive resale value. Clunky nerd gadgets spotlighted in the WSJ have neither.

snapchat is cool. whether these glasses will be cool...who knows, but they certainly have a good shot at it.

These are the same teenagers/college-age persons who own $600+ iPhones.

Most phones are subsidized by wireless contracts.

Cell phones aren't subsidized, they are just financed over 2 years (with the payment often hidden in your monthly cell phone bill). If the price of the glasses is a problem (I doubt it is), they could be financed the same way "Just give us $11/month for a year and you can have them today!"

That's becoming more common but is not universal yet. Phones often still are subsidized, even when the buyer is still paying something for the phone.

The phone-sized early termination fees put the lie to it being any sort of subsidy.

(for "subsidy" to be a reasonable description of the flow of funds, the phone company would probably have to be losing money on the most expensive phones; of course they aren't. They provide the phone up front with a minimal payment, but they have structured the monthly fees to more than cover their costs for doing this.)

Except they charge me the same rate if I already have my device as the person in the long-term contract, just without the early termination fee. If they have structured the locked-in person's contract to cover hardware costs then they have structured mine for that as well, despite the fact that I didn't get hardware from them. Therefore, I am paying part of the hardware costs for the people who buy phones from the provider; i.e. I am subsidizing them.

Furthermore, early termination fees are constant for all contracts. The person who got the $150 phone has the same termination fee as the person who got the $600 phone. Thus again, someone is subsidizing someone else.

I'm pretty sure that people using paid for hardware are just more profitable than people that are still paying for hardware. But they make income on all the people.

And the fees aren't necessarily the same for cheaper phones:

https://www.verizonwireless.com/landingpages/return-policy/

Cheaper than a pair of raybans, which are fairly ubiquitous. If they are successful, the price will drop too. If the hardware is minimal, and people like the design, why not buy these instead of whatever other sunglasses they were going to buy and get a fun toy as well?

Raybans actually look nice and maintain their value. These look like they were designed by a committee that googled "cool millennial"

All the young 20 something year olds that I know are still not dropping $120 on sun glasses unless they are young college graduated professionals. Most are not. And I'm a 28 year old professional that wears $10 knock offs.

I'm with you on the idea that "cool" and "lifestyle" sell, especially when they're backed by celebs. That said, Snapchat isn't a lifestyle product, it's an app. Moving from pocket to face is a monumental transition with monumental challenges, but certainly one worth trying. My money says the glasses never become mass adopted but maybe Snapchat - sorry, Snap - learns a few things along the way that set it up for success with Hardware Product #2.

And hardware product #2 could be an interface with even less friction.

Remember Memoto? — The lifelogging camera that clips on your shirt; it looks like they're called Narrative now [0].

If Snapchat owns the camera hardware they have total control over analytics. They could become the platform for sharing daily moments. At some point, that's what Facebook was, except there was always an app layer in-between.

[0]: http://getnarrative.com

The trendy end of fashion always looks ridiculous after it falls out of style. Snapchat still has the trendiness that Google and Facebook lost long ago. If you think otherwise, find a few 20 year olds (outside of tech) and ask them what they think of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and Snapchat.

Facebook probably can still use Instagram's brand, so that is an edge over Google. If they can do it soon enough while resisting branding the hardware as "Facebook" is another matter. That also means they probably have to already be close to releasing a finished product.

The larger question to me is who will have the stamina to thrive in the post-smartphone era? Snapchat may be able to break to ice and get a lot of people to wear something weird and clunky. By generation two or three, what happens if Apple, Magic Leap, or someone else is able to produce a more refined & seamless wearable? To "win" Snapchat will have to produce an incredibly robust AR headset that no one thinks twice about wearing all day long.

Other commenters are correct, the article reads like a shameless press release.

Reads like a full page ad by the WSJ. Uncool on multiple levels.

The price is quite right. The design remains to be tested in real environments with real people. Let's not forget the reactions to Google Glass. Framing (pun intended) of the intended use will be everything

No, they look ridiculous. If anyone walked up to me wearing those I'd have to really restrain myself from ripping them off their face and stepping on them. At the very least they'd get a laugh.

That's pretty much the intention, they're only supposed to be worn at special events so it's super overt that you could be filming