Snap isn’t the only social media company with smart glasses and an expanding hardware portfolio, but what’s separating its approach from Meta? While announcing Pixy, a $229 drone that takes off from your hand to capture selfies, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel spent some time explaining his decision to focus on experiences built for the real world instead of the virtual metaverse.
“The reason why we don’t use that word is because it’s pretty ambiguous and hypothetical,” he told The Guardian. “Just ask a room of people how to define it, and everyone’s definition is totally different.”
Spiegel also told The Verge’s Alex Heath that companies making metaverse pitches “are really talking about something that doesn’t exist yet,” as opposed to augmented reality, where “there are 250 million people engaging with AR every day in just the Snapchat application.” Those AR interactions include everything from the goofy selfie effects that Snap made popular years ago to more advanced shopping experiences.
