References digitaltrends.com, businessinsider.com

Snapchat expands Spectacles camera glasses to Europe using their Snapbot Moving Vending Machines. The videos recorded from these glasses are synced to the user's Snapchat account. Their initial debut was in the US with a marketing campaign in which they would place a Snapbot Vending Machine in a location for 24 hours and update a Snapbot map. Eager fans would see an updated map where the new Snapbot location would be.

Did their efforts in the United States work well enough to retry the same campaign in Europe? Their US strategy of selling Spectacles in limited 24-hour locations left them overestimating the demand for their camera glasses and have hundreds of thousands of unsold units. Supposedly the Snapbots have been put on a hiatus, to return sometime in the future.

Similar to the facial detection that Snapchat already offers in the application, the Snapbot Vending Machines would allow the users to try on the different glasses/colors virtually before purchasing. Though it was not an instant success, and Snapchat began selling their Spectacles online to move their excessive leftover inventory, many questions come to mind. Could other specialty vending machines utilize this type of camera-integrated technology to model a virtual representation of a person using items sold before purchasing? Which type of items would lend themselves to a virtual "try-on"? What do you think?

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