Evan Spiegel says Snap has worked on Spectacles since about 2014, and recalls that Google Glass came out in 2013.
“We've been working on specs probably since 2014. I think Glass came out in 2013, I want to say.”
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Evan Spiegel
1 episodes · 23 quoted claims
Spiegel says Snap built a ground-up Linux-based operating system for Specs because it performs better than repurposing Android.
“building a ground-up operating system on Linux was really difficult to do, but it's way more performant than trying to repurpose Android.”
Spiegel contrasts Specs with Google's Aura glasses project, which he says needs a large external compute pack.
“Aura has a huge compute pack, right? We just don't think it's realistic for people to carry around a compute pack to use glasses.”
Spiegel says Snap owns the whole Specs stack, including the Lens Studio developer tools and the Lens Core rendering engine.
“we actually own every single piece of the stack, right? So everything from the developer tools called Lens Studio to the rendering engine called Lens Core”
Spiegel says more than two-thirds of Snap's new code is now written by AI.
“Now more than two-thirds of, you know, new code is written, you know, by AI at Snap.”
Spiegel says camera glasses sell for roughly $150 to $200, one reason Snap sees the market as small.
“So if you look at camera glasses today, little low hundreds of dollars, maybe $150, $200 to buy camera glasses.”
Snap has a calendar app called Saturn, whose team replaced a roughly $100,000-a-year enterprise bug-report service with a tool they built in a day.
“we have a calendar app called Saturn, which is really cool.”
Spiegel recalls Apple announcing that about 500 billion selfies were captured on iPhone in a year.
“I think Apple announced last year, they were like, there's been 500 billion selfies captured on iPhone this year or something like that.”
Spiegel says Snap's team found that well over 1 trillion selfies were captured on Snapchat over the same period, more than the figure Snap announced publicly.
“they came back and they're like, oh, well over 1 trillion selfies have been captured on Snapchat.”
Snap announced 25 million Snapchat Plus subscribers and a direct revenue business running at over $1 billion a year.
“We just announced we had 25 million Snapchat Plus subscribers, over a billion run rate on the direct revenue business.”
Snap sells an advertising product called Promoted Places on its map, with closed-loop measurement of store visits.
“we've got a product called Promoted Places, and actually really powerful closed-loop measurement around that.”
Spiegel says the Snapchat camera is one of the largest image and video generation platforms in the world, partly monetized through the Lens Plus subscription tier.
“I don't think people realize that the Snapchat camera is one of the largest image and video generation platforms in the world”
Spiegel says Snapchat showed that value depends on the few people you talk to most, not on network size, countering the view that more friends meant more value.
“What Snapchat proved was actually that it's not about the size of your network or the number of people you can contact on your network.”
Spiegel says Snap was one of the first companies to rank content with AI, through its Discover service for publisher and creator content.
“We were one of the first companies to actually rank that content with AI, you know, with our service called Discover.”
Spiegel says that around 2016 or 2017 Snap decided to separate social content from media content.
“I think back in, it may have been 2016, 2017, we said the most important thing you need to do is separate social from media.”
Spiegel says Snap was discussing privacy and self-expression as early as 2012, when most services saved everything.
“we were talking about things like the importance of privacy, right? And the relationship between privacy and self-expression, you know, back in 2012.”
Spiegel criticizes Australia's under-16 social media ban for applying to only a small number of apps and not being implemented at the operating-system level.
“Yeah, I think there are a lot of challenges with the way that the ban was implemented. As you mentioned, it only applies to a small number of apps.”
Spiegel says a few independent studies, which Snap did not fund, found Snapchat associated with positive wellbeing, unlike TikTok or Instagram.
“There are a small number of independent studies, you know, that we have not funded or otherwise been involved with that have tried to understand actually the impacts of different apps”
Spiegel says he long opposed Snapchat streaks, but changed his mind after hearing from users who used them to stay in touch with friends.
“I did not like the idea of streaks, did not want to do it. I actually fought very hard to kill streaks over the years. We've always been anti-metric at Snap.”
Spiegel says AI tools let Snap build a new service with about half a person's time and distribute it through Snapchat, supporting a multi-app strategy.
“Now, with, you know, half a person's time, half a team member's time, we can build a totally new service and distribute it through Snapchat.”
Spiegel says Norway was the first country where Snapchat gained traction.
“Norway was the first place that Snapchat got traction. I mean, we had no traction anywhere.”
Spiegel's hypothesis for Snapchat's early success in Norway is the country's high-end phones and affordable, fast internet, which suited a photo-heavy iPhone-only app.
“I think one of our hypotheses is that Norway had both very high-end devices and great internet connectivity that was affordable for the population.”
Spiegel says Snap builds some of the most important Specs components in-house in the US and UK, next to its R&D teams.
“we build some of the most important components for specs in the US and in the UK.”