Week In Review: Who's That Behind Those Snapchat Spectacles | CBS and Viacom, Sitting In A Tree
- Who’s That Behind Those Snapchat Spectacles?
Snapchat surprised the industry (to put it mildly) with the dual WTF announcements that it was introducing a pair of camera-enabled sunglasses (called Spectacles) whole simultaneously rebranding itself as Snap, Inc., to account for its new role as a hardware/eyewear manufacturer.While visions of a naked Robert Scoble in the shower with Google Glass immediately popped into the heads of just about everyone in the media/tech industry (you could allegedly hear a collective “Ewwwwwww” in certain sections of Palo Alto), Snapchat insisted that the $130 sunglasses were nothing like Google Glass.To begin with, they were sunglasses. Duh.They also were able to film in both landscape and portrait at a 115º angle that was only visible on the glasses themselves (phones being incapable to showing 115ª video). And they came in three really cool colors, whereas Google Glass only came in clear. Why It MattersJoking aside, Snapchat has put the notion of wearables on the map again. And while at $130, Snapchat Spectacles may not be on every 14-year-old’s Christmas list, they are inexpensive enough to possibly make it onto a lot of them.That’s the one thing the media seems to be missing—Spectacles are not aimed at 34-year-old Millennial tech bloggers. They’re aimed at 14-year-old Gen Zees, and for that reason, they just might work, giving Snapchat yet another step up on rivals Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, who seems intent on stealing Snapchat’s best features.If it succeeds it will open the door for a whole new generation of wearables. While we suspect it won’t—the creepiness factor of not knowing when your friends are filming you is still a barrier, as is the limited appeal of the GoPro-esque nature of the videos, it’s a noble experiment (albeit an unexpected one) from Snapchat. What You Need To Do About ItWatch and wait. Do not start building apps for it or trying to figure out how to work it into your marketing plan. Watch to see if people are buying them, who those people are, what they’re doing with them. Then act.
- CBS and Viacom, Sitting In A Tree…
Our friend Rich Greenfield has been talking about this for weeks, but now it seems that the rest of the media is picking up on the very distinct possibility that CBS is going to buy Viacom.It makes sense on many levels—Viacom has a lot of once-hot channels (MTV, Comedy Central) which could be revived again—they are down, but not out. CBS, it’s CEO Les Moonves in particular, seems to have figured out TV circa 2016 and they are killing it in the ratings. So a merger makes a lot of sense for both parties. Why It Matters CBS is the only major broadcast network that doesn’t have an empire—they own Showtime, but that’s about it. By adding MTV, VH1, Comedy Central and Paramount Studios to their roster, they will suddenly become a much larger force to reckon with. If the Moonves Magic can help bring MTV and Comedy Central back to life, that’s a huge plus for the industry as well. It’s also a strong sign that TV is not dead, that there are billions of dollars being spent on television because at the end of the day, it still makes content that matters. What You Need To Do About It.Not much to do right now but to sit back, grab your popcorn and see how it all plays out. If the merger does go through, we’ll have more concrete advice once we see what the terms look like.
TV[R]EV is written, curated and incubated by the BRaVe Ventures team. Find TV[R]EV on Facebook and Twitter, and sign up for the newsletter to stay up to date on the TV[R]EVOLUTION.
