Throwing major shade... First, Facebook copied (aka: #Zucked) Snap's stories on Insta. Then, FB announced plans to launch a smartglass rival to Snap Spectacles. Yesterday, FB unveiled those smartglasses — and they're called "Stories." FB teamed up with Italian glasses giant Luxottica to launch Ray-Ban branded glasses. FB's first smart glasses are about everything the selfie stick isn't: first-person perspective.
Lab goggle vibes... Smart glasses are Big Tech's holy grail, but all efforts have flopped so far: "Google Glass" was an epic fail. Snap lost $40M on 300K unsold AR Spectacles. But FB's smart glasses have one key advantage: they don't look like smart glasses.
FB’s big opportunity = unbranding itself... Stories look like Ray-Bans, not FB-branded gadgets — unlike FB's other hardware, Oculus and Portal. While FB supplies the tech, Ray-Ban handles the design and sales — a key difference from other tech-designed smart glasses. FB has admitted it has a public "trust deficit." By partnering with a well-loved brand, FB is giving Stories a higher chance of success.