SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLES

Snapchat Spectacles are now available to buy online in the US

Bye bye Bot.
Bye bye Bot.
Image: AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
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Now the sunset Snaps will almost take themselves.

Snapchat, whose parent company Snap Inc. filed for an IPO on Feb. 2, announced today that its Spectacles sunglasses, which let wearers record videos and upload them to Snapchat, are now sold online. The glasses are only available in the US, with a price tag of $130.

Launched in September, Spectacles record video and pair to your phone over Bluetooth or wifi. They had previously only been available to purchase from vending machines dropped at surprise locations around the US, sparking nationwide fervor to track them down. In November, Yahoo reports, a pair was going for $5,000 on eBay.

The vending machines will be placed on hold and the New York pop-up store selling the glasses has closed, according to The Verge.

Snap, whose IPO was valued at between $19.5 billion and $22.2 billion this week, is about to embark on a road show to persuade would-be investors. In its filings with the US Securities and Exchange commission, Snap noted that Spectacles have “not generated significant revenue…”

But the glasses have generated plenty of buzz, and making them available online could re-up that chatter just a few weeks shy of the company’s debut on the New York Stock Exchange.

Snapchat has 161 million daily users as of December 2016. If the glasses do more than create hype and Snap can actually move its product, it might also succeed where others have failed: as a social network and a hardware company.