Text | Du Chen
Edit | Vicky Xiao
Metacosm is the hottest concept in the current technology industry, and everyone should be familiar with it. But a few years before the concept became a buzzword, Silicon Valley's darling was augmented reality (AR), especially mobile AR.
However, the heavy investment of these giant companies in AR has either failed or has not yet found a clue.
For example, Apple, the application scenario of AR technology can be said to have basically not exceeded the Measure (measurement) application that comes with the system. In recent years, it has been rumored that Apple has a team of hundreds of people secretly developing AR glasses, but so far no real thing has been seen. Google has also invested in AR development very early, including Google Lens, AR search, map integration, etc., but these features are still very niche.
Instead, a "small company" in Los Angeles, hundreds of miles away, made AR a national product.
It's Snap.
A national AR application
Snap is the company behind Snapchat, a well-known social software in Europe and the United States - but then again, Snapchat is no longer a simple social software: now the product integrates a large number of FUNCTIONS BASED ON AR and related technologies, and has become the only veritable "national AR application".
The data can prove this view. According to data revealed by Snap's annual developer/partner conference on Thursday:
Snap now has 600 million monthly active users, of which 330 million are daily active users;
Snapchat's camera effects are called Lens, and a lot of lens contains AR features. To date, Lens has been used more than 5 trillion times;
On average, more than 250 million Snapchat users use AR Lens per day, with up to 6 billion interactions per day, equivalent to 24 times per active AR feature user;
More than 250 million users have used the in-app AR Lens feature dedicated to e-commerce shopping, with a total of more than 5 billion uses. Users who have used the SHOPPING AR Lens feature have almost doubled their purchase conversion rate.
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel Image source: Snap
Meta (formerly Facebook), the craziest company to promote the metaversity concept, is actually at least 4 years behind Snap in terms of AR technology and products.
In 2018, the first year after Snap went public, facing huge pressure from competitors such as Facebook/Instagram and Tiktok, as well as the negative impact of user boycott due to poor client experience, the company's performance was once very dismal, and a large number of users switched to TikTok.
As a result, Spiegel decided to let the company all in technological innovation, and chose AR as the direction of full strength, Snap also changed from the "social application company" in the past to the "camera company" that is advertised to the outside world today.
Snap's core function is the camera, and in this overall adjustment of the company's strategy, using AR to enhance the camera experience has become a top priority. The team developed the underlying layer of mobile AR technology in-house, as well as a large number of front-end effects and stickers (collectively known as Lens).
Snapchat's location-based AR effects Image source: Snap
These new, cool special effects have allowed Snapchat to regain the favor of users and advertisers.
Evan Spiegel, co-founder and CEO of the company, said that since focusing on AR technology, the company's product strategy has been market-certified, not only the financial losses have been continuously compressed, quarterly revenue has soared, and the number of users has achieved stable growth for three consecutive years.
Do not engage in meta-universe, focus on creating a "playground"
Now Snap's health is a world away from when the wave of instant social networking receded and once it was impossible to find itself. At yesterday's annual Partner/Developer Conference, Snap announced the latest advances in many products, AR technology platforms, and ecosystems.
Lens Studio & Lens Cloud
Lens Studio is a dedicated development environment for AR, which can be understood as the AR version of Xcode/Android Studio. AR developers can use this development environment to create AR effects for Snapchat or other third-party platforms/scenes.
At yesterday's conference, Snap announced that the new version of Lens Studio finally supports technologies such as ray tracing and depth perception, which means that developers can use it to make more realistic and gorgeous AR effects:
Snap CTO Bobby Murphy demonstrates Lens Studio ray tracing Image credit: Snap
At the same time, Snap has also introduced more comprehensive data analysis tools for developers. In the new version of Lens Studio, developers will be able to use the Event Insights feature to view user interaction statistics using AR effects, tracking interaction events including touch screens, voice control, and more. Through data analysis tools, developers can better fix vulnerabilities, improve the experience, and then develop AR special effects to get more users and make more money.
Lens Studio Statistical Tool Event Analysis Feature Image source: Snap
This year, Snap also offered a more powerful cloud tool for professional AR developers: Lens Cloud. It is a free set of back-end services that include remote storage services, geo-based services, and multi-user services.
Specifically, complex AR Lenses may include a large amount of footage, which developers can save in the cloud through a storage service that users can access at any time, significantly reducing the pressure on Lens to render and store locally on the phone's hardware; at the same time, storage services also include persistent storage capabilities, which means that users can use the same AR Lens multiple times in a row, just like playing a game, they can see the progress of the last save:
Lens Cloud storage features (remote footage, persistent storage) Image credit: Snap
Geo-location-based services allow developers to bind AR Lenses to specific locations in the real world; multi-user services, as the name suggests, allow multiple users to interact with the same AR Lens at the same time, in the same place, or in different locations.
Lens Cloud multi-user service Image source: Snap
With Lens Cloud, AR developers will be able to develop more complex and playable AR effects through Lens Studio.
It can be understood this way:
In the past, Snapchat was a social app for everyone to play crazy together,
Snapchat is now more like a tool for users to play with themselves through AR Lens.
With Lens Cloud, the future Snapchat will become a "playground" for everyone to play together in the AR world.
To be honest, there's nothing closer to a "metacosm" than this feeling. But Snap is incredibly conservative in concept.
Spiegel said yesterday that Snap rejects the concept of a "metaverse" because it is too vague and hypothetical: "If you ask a room full of people how to define a metacosm, you get a completely different answer from everyone." ”
In Spiegel's view, although many companies, including Meta, are blowing the metaverse, the metacosm has not existed until today. Compared to the metaverse, AR is real: Spiegel said that more than 250 million users use Snapchat's AR features every day, including a variety of exaggerated and fun special effects, as well as shopping-related AR try-on features.
It is worth noting that this data only calculates Snapchat's own product itself; at the same time, more users indirectly use the AR technology provided by Snap through Samsung's mobile phone camera, Disney's official app and other products.
The result: while other companies are still frantically selling the concept of metaversity, but it is difficult to impress ordinary users other than practitioners and followers, for Snap, AR is already a commercial market with hundreds of millions of users.
Snap has done what larger Silicon Valley tech giants, including Apple and Google, have not done, and it has almost single-handedly supported the technology ecosystem of mobile AR.
One more thing drone:
Show love to the real world again
While other "metaverse" companies are rolling out all kinds of hardware and software that keep you addicted to the virtual world, Snap also unexpectedly released a new product at yesterday's conference: drones.
This heel drone is called the Pixy, which is only slightly larger than the palm of the hand and can be carried in the pocket.
Image credit: Snap
Image source: Federal Communications Commission
The Pixy has two cameras, one in front of the fuselage and the other on the underside of the fuselage. It's designed to take it out of your pocket, press a button, and in a matter of seconds you can get it flying, complete the action you want, and fly back to your hand. Especially during the take-off process, no complicated setup is required.
The Pixy has four flight modes: hover hover, orbit surround, follow follow and lens pull-out reveal, controlling the mode with a knob above the fuselage and taking off by pressing the yellow button next to it. No handle, no setup required, on-the-go, no burden, is its essence.
(The Snapchat app is designed with the same design in mind.) ）
Pixy drone boxed (render) Image credit: Snap
Evan Spiegel demonstrates Pixy take-off and landing Image credit: Snap
Compared with other companies that are impatient to become Apple, Snap is relatively safe and conservative in transforming hardware. Pixy is the company's second hardware product in 11 years.
The last hardware product was the Spectacles smart camera sunglasses led by the lesser-known Snapchat China hardware team. Pixy, like Spectacles, can press a button when shooting, and the video after shooting will be automatically transmitted wirelessly to the phone's Snapchat app, and then users can use the various editing functions of the Snapchat app to edit the video and add special effects.
With the note sticker on the prototype that Pixy sent for review, we can basically determine that the development and production of this drone should still be the responsibility of Snap's hardware team in Shenzhen.
When Pixy was released at the conference, Snap used a scene as a demonstration: a bunch of couples hiking in the wild, walking up to a place to take some selfie videos, so they pulled out Pixy and asked him to take off and shoot with him — it's that simple.
However, in fact, behind this use scene, it is Snap's love for the real world that is implied.
Image credit: Snap
Spiegel said that the core concept behind Snap's overall strategy from 2018 onwards is:
People still live in the real world; people enjoy spending time together in the real world more than in the virtual world.
This philosophy has not changed even during and in the post-pandemic era, when people's virtual/real-life balance is completely out of balance.
In his speech at yesterday's conference, Spiegel said:
"With AR, computing is superimposed on top of the real world — once upon a time it was an unbridled idea, but today, with our camera technology, it's possible,"
"What makes AR so important is its ability to combine the power of computing with what we see and experience in the real world. AR allows us to use computing in familiar real-world environments, seamlessly integrating technology into our lives. ”
Snap's focus on AR isn't on how cool those virtual parts are (and that's what metaversary companies and practitioners have in mind), but rather on the original literal meaning of the four words "augmented reality": augmenting the real world with the power of computation.
What the company wants to do is not to immerse users in products and technologies, but to bring users a new way to observe and experience the real world through products and technologies.
From Snap,The Metaverse Company has a lot to learn.
Title image source: Snap
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