Augmented Reality picks up steam

A couple old friends pop back onto our radar

Snapchat had its earnings report yesterday, and while there was no mention of lightsabers or spaghetti, the company continues to show that both advertisers and users are more interested in an augmented reality than in our own current hellscape reality. 

Which, I guess, seems pretty obvious. Life sucks right now and any little spark of joy, like say an anime filter for your phone, can get people through the day.

“The adoption of augmented reality is happening faster than we had previously anticipated, and we are working together as a team to execute on the many opportunities in front of us,” Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said in a statement accompanying the company’s Q3 results, which saw gains in daily users (249 million, up from 238 million last quarter) and revenue ($679 million, up from $555.9 million).

In the company’s earnings call, it said that its users “engaged” with its Anime Lens, which turns people into anime characters in real-time, 3 billion times in the first week it went live. What “engaged” means is up in the air, but even if it’s taking the slightest action, that’s a pretty hefty number. 

And on the ad side, brands are eating it up. From Champs Sports, which Snap says “has seen an average share rate of 8 percent among users of the photo-messaging app, which is five times higher than the benchmark for average retailers,” to Sally Hansen nail polish, which allows you to try on nail polish without actually putting on nail polish.

Hell, even Microsoft is getting into the Snapchat game. According to Social Media Today:

Next gen Xbox Series X gaming console at its Xbox Games Showcase event, the company has also partnered with Snapchat on a new AR campaign which will see a series of game-themed AR Lenses showcased within the app.

And former astronaut Mark Kelly, running for the Senate from the Grand Canyon state, started his own Snapchat, which The Verge reported as “the first custom Snapchat AR lens from a Senate campaign.”

The point is this: Snapchat’s ability to stay away from Congress’s regulatory Eye of Sauron that has focused on Facebook and Google and Apple and Amazon; provide advertisers with that mystical “never-been-done” before product while at the same time giving them a “brand safe” environment where they won’t have to answer to pesky reporters asking why they continue to run ads on a platform that supports hate, has given the platform a leading edge in the augmented reality reality. 

But as Snapchat seems to be leading the charge here, two early social media companies (Gowalla and Foursquare) that were in an arms race over location-based services, most notably “check-ins” where users would open their apps to get badges and passports and mayorships, are reintroducing its platforms for an augmented reality world.

Yesterday, nine years after Facebook acquihired Gowalla, the company poked its head out to tell folks that they are back, introducing a “worldwide augmented reality social game that inspires you to explore.”

🙌 jw @jw

Honestly been staring at this for 30 minutes and don’t exactly know what to say. Except it’s real. And I’m v excited. Let’s gooooo! 🥽

Gowalla @gowalla

Y’all ready to go out again? Gowalla is coming to your city in 2021. You can up for the Passport waitlist today. 👀🧡❤️💜 https://t.co/2qWAo4Yjpf

What this means is anyone’s guess, as the revamped company is still in a closed beta and appears not to roll out at least until 2021. And interestingly, when Facebook bought the company, apparently it didn’t buy the name or the IP. 

Sarah Frier @sarahfrier

Update: @jw tells me Facebook never acquired the brand or IP. So a decade later, hello Gowalla again! I have an old Gowalla shirt still.

I wrote about Gowalla for the Huffington Post right before it got bought, and what a trip. First, never read your decade-old stories; second, at the time, smartphones were still the new shiny object, with only 100 million sold worldwide. And this graf stood out as something:

Foursquare and Gowalla have an intertwining introductory narrative. Both companies launched on the same day in March, 2009, after discovering the other only a few days prior. As Gowalla’s director of business development, Andy Ellwood, said one morning in the bustling, sun-soaked Starbucks on Astor Place in New York City (which, incidentally, I found out through Gowalla’s “Tips,” is the largest Starbucks in the nation and third largest in the world), “From that moment, we’re in the same sentence. Because for all intents and purposes, we both were trying to teach people an action which was not part of their every day self; which was to bring location into the stories we tell.”

Flowery (and poor) writing aside, the idea that where we are was an important aspect to the growth of social media, if not the version of the internet we live in now, is a compelling one. We showed people where we are through check-ins, sure, but also through the pictures we took. That led to some restaurants actually banning taking pictures of food and posting them on Instagram, as the flash disturbed other guests, but also created a delay in service. 

(Though in this 2020 shithole-of-a-year, I think we can all agree that we would love nothing more than to be able to sit in a crowded restaurant and Instagram our food.)

If Gowalla is going to replicate the importance of space and time with our now suped up smartphones, what more interesting way than augmented reality? 

Just like that day in 2009 when Gowalla and Foursquare both rolled out, the universe, in its increasingly comic way, also brought Foursquare to the surface yesterday, as the former location-based service turned data company introduced audio augmented reality:

From Foursquare:

Today we’ve got a new experiment for you to play with: Marsbot for AirPods, a lightweight virtual assistant that proactively whispers local recommendations (and other fun snippets) into your headphones or earbuds as you’re walking around. It’s our take on what happens when Foursquare merges with Clippy (yes, from Microsoft Word!) with a dash of Samantha from the movie Her (ScarJo’s character!) and the realization that headphones may just be the world’s most ubiquitous Augmented Reality hardware. 

Audio augmented reality is something that’s been toyed with, to lots of hype if not limited success. In 2019, Marketplace breathlessly said: 

“Audio augmented reality is poised to become the new selling feature of headphones.”

Though in 2020, Protocol reported that Bose has thrown in the towel on its augmented reality glasses:

"Bose AR didn't become what we envisioned," a Bose spokesperson told Protocol. "It's not the first time our technology couldn't be commercialized the way we planned, but components of it will be used to help Bose owners in a different way. We're good with that. Because our research is for them, not us."

So maybe audio isn’t ready for AR. 

And while the Gowalla and Foursquare blasts from the past are hopping onto the augmented reality train, Techcrunch gathered some venture capital folks to discuss where AR is going, and it’s interesting to see people who invest serious cash into many companies still rely on tropes:

“Besides Pokémon Go I don’t think we have seen the engagement numbers needed for AR,” Boost VC investor Brayton Williams tells TechCrunch. “We believe VR is still the largest long-term opportunity of the two. AR complements the real world, VR creates endless new worlds.” 

Perhaps someone should tell the VCs about this little company called Snapchat and how it’s creating new worlds for users and advertisers.

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Leo Kottke and Mike Gordon, NPR’s Tiny Desk (home) Concerts

Some interesting links:

For media criticism: 

• Washington Post public editor: the powerful have realized they don’t need the Post (CJR)

• Trump Taunts Lesley Stahl of ‘60 Minutes’ After Cutting Off Interview (NYT)

For agency revolving door:

• IPG has a new CEO (IPG)

For fun experiments:

• AOC, Ilhan Omar draw 400,000 to Twitch stream to get out the vote (Axios)

For failed experiments:

• Katzenberg May Shut Down Quibi as Options Run Short (The Information)

For grifters:

• I Watched My Friend Dying on Facebook. But It Was All a GoFundMe Scam. (One Zero)

• Threatening emails reportedly sent to Democratic voters in three swing states, sparking investigations (Washington Post)

For buyers:

• Facebook Rolls Out New Frictionless Commerce Ad Features, Aimed At Mobile Holiday Shopping Season (MediaPost)

For more media layoffs/buyouts:

• S.F. Chronicle owner offers voluntary buyouts to employees (S.F. Chronicle)