On: Why Snapchat Spectacles failed

[jonahx]

It's interesting to go back and re-read the overwhelmingly positive predictions HN users made when Spectacles were announced:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12569182

and compare those to the "it was obviously going to fail" responses here.

[TylerE → jonahx]

Is that really surprising? This is, erm, not the most critical audience.

[LordDragonfang → jonahx]

As someone who was looking forward to getting a consumer version of Glass, I get a special schadenfreude looking back at all the articles saying how obvious it was that Spectacles would succeed where Google failed.

[empath75 → jonahx]

The only people I ever saw say anything positive about them were people that were pumping the IPO or people they paid to hype them.

[jonahx → empath75]

Looking at the profiles of the two top-voted comments in that thread, that doesn't seem to be the case. But just browse the replies: many HN posters genuinely seemed to believe they'd nailed some key niche and important product details. They didn't strike me that way -- which is why I remembered the post.

The contrast struck me as an interesting example of hindsight bias.