Snap’s New Drone Takes Flight
Uncanny Valley | WIRED
WIRED
4.1 • 572 Ratings
🗓️ 28 April 2022
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The social photo-sharing and messaging app Snapchat is bigger than you probably think it is. According to its parent company, Snap, the app has more than 330 million active daily users—that’s over 100 million more users than Twitter.
Since the Snapchat app is all about sharing photos, Snap likes to come up with innovative and unique hardware designs that give its users more interesting ways to take those photos. You might remember its camera-bedecked Spectacles from a few years ago. Now Snap has unveiled a “selfie drone” called Pixy. The $230, palm-sized gadget lifts off, takes a sharable photo or video of you, then lands. It’s just a bit of whimsical fun, which is very much the point of the whole Snapchat experience.
This week, Michael and Lauren talk about Snap’s new drone, as well as the company’s place in the larger social media landscape.
Show Notes:
Read more about the Pixy drone in Lauren’s latest story for WIRED. Read about Snap’s first Spectacles, the second ones, and the third ones. Also read about the augmented reality glasses the company released last year.
Recommendations:
Lauren recommends the episode of The Verge’s Decoder podcast with crypto investor Chris Dixon. Mike recommends the YouTube channel Fault Radio for streaming electronic music DJ sets.
Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Lauren. |
| 0:01.0 | Mike. |
| 0:02.0 | Lauren, when you eventually quit Twitter, are you going to take all of your talents to snap? |
| 0:06.0 | This is a loaded question because you're making the assumption that I'm quitting Twitter, but then you're asking about snap. |
| 0:14.0 | Hmm. |
| 0:15.0 | I would say snap might not be my first platform of choice, but it's not a bad option after Twitter. |
| 0:21.2 | Do you feel as though your particular gifts at social media engagement don't translate to the platform? |
| 0:27.8 | I'm generally a little bit more pithy and clever with words than I am at like bunny ears. |
| 0:36.8 | What about you? |
| 0:38.2 | Are you going to quit Twitter and bring your talents to snap? |
| 0:41.5 | I don't think so. |
| 0:43.7 | All right. |
| 0:44.7 | All right. |
| 0:45.3 | That's it. |
| 0:45.7 | That's the day's show. |
| 0:53.4 | Hi, everyone. Welcome to Gadget Lab. I am Michael Colori. I'm a senior editor at Wired. |
| 0:57.8 | And I'm Loring Good. I'm a senior writer at Wired. Today we are talking about the biggest social media story of the week, the thing that everyone online is talking about, which is Snap, the company formerly known as Snapchat. |
| 1:10.0 | You probably thought I was going to say Twitter. |
| 1:11.8 | I did. |
| 1:13.6 | And yes, the Twitter board and Elon Musk did reach an agreement this week for Musk to |
| 1:18.5 | buy Twitter and take the company private. |
| 1:20.8 | It's huge news in the Web 2.0 world and potentially marks the end of one era in the |
... |
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