Over the last week, Snapchat’s Spectacles vending machine has been cropping up in new places throughout the US. Called the Snapbot, the machine has been dispensing the glasses for lucky buyers in three locations – so far.
While the first two locations were somewhat obvious choices, the third has left people scratching their heads.
So where has Snapbot been so far, and where is it headed next? Here’s the breakdown.
1. Venice Beach, California
Snapchat #spectacles now on sale in Venice in vending machine. Huge line to buy pic.twitter.com/iPDedZYbU5
— Jefferson Graham 📷 (@jeffersongraham) November 10, 2016
Venice was the site of Snapbot's first touch-down. The bright yellow vending machine - with balloons attached - was placed on a sidewalk outside a blue house that served as Snapchat's - now known as Snap Inc. - first office.
The machine is designed to look like a smiling face and "wakes up" and opens its eye as people pass by. The big eye on the front uses the same face lens technology that's in the app, so you can get a preview of what you'd look like with the glasses on. There are three buttons on the front for the three colors available: coral, teal, and black.
Each pair costs $130 and while people in Venice could initially buy two pairs per person, but people used multiple credit cards to buy more than two pairs. Now, you can only buy one per person. According to TechCrunch, people in line estimated the Snapbot has about 200 pairs inside.
2. Big Sur, California
— Spectacles (@Spectacles) November 13, 2016
After its first stop in Venice Beach, the Snapbot moved to Loma Vista, California, a settlement in sparsely populated part of the coastline known as Big Sur.
This was the second location significant to Snap's history. A piece by the Wall Street Journal's Seth Stevenson chronicles Snap CEO Evan Spiegel's trip to the area with his fiancée Miranda Kerr.
"It was our first vacation, and we went to Big Sur for a day or two," Spiegel told the Journal. "We were walking through the woods, stepping over logs, looking up at the beautiful trees. And when I got the footage back and watched it, I could see my own memory, through my own eyes - it was unbelievable. It's one thing to see images of an experience you had, but it's another thing to have an experience of the experience. It was the closest I'd ever come to feeling like I was there again."
3. Catoosa, Oklahoma
https://twitter.com/TheRichardM/status/798544137951678465
Snapbot ended up in Catoosa, Oklahoma, on Tuesday morning. The vending machine was placed right next to a huge sculpture of a blue whale in a pond, a popular roadside attraction in Oklahoma.
The third location seems to break the convention of the first two - a place significant to Snap's history - and made it clear that the company isn't targeting major urban centers for the bots.
Where will Spectacles go next?
There are a lot of theories about the location of future Spectacles drops based on important company history, where the company has seller's permits, and places Spiegel has visited in the past.
One thing is very likely though: the Spectacles are coming East.
It's unlikely at this point that the company would backtrack to other West Coast states, and it seems like Snapchat is trying to avoid a typical tech launch or cater to the Silicon Valley crowd. In all likelihood, Snapchat will continue its tour of the Midwest, possibly heading North to a new latitude (Catoosa and Venice are on the same latitudinal line).
VRScout confirmed Snap has valid re-sale permits for Snapchat's Bot in the states of Nevada, Texas, Washington and Hawaii. Business Insider later independently confirmed that Snap has a permit for New York as well. But Snap is probably lining up permits in all 50 states - if it hasn't already.
Our best guess for where it's headed next? A location that's not just about buying camera-enabled glasses. Snap is focused on something else besides sales here - it seems intent on creating an experience around getting to the bots, as well as having an experience while you're there. All three locations have a lot more to offer than a vending machine selling a tech product.
Which, after all, jibes with the goal of Spectacles in the first place: to capture experiences and share them with the world.