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Facebook is expanding it’s physical product offering, including a more portable “Portal” smart hub, and stylish shades and glasses in partnership with Ray-Ban.

Let’s take a look!

Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses

Ray-Ban Stories are the new smart glasses product from Facebook. They can be purchased online or in stores for $299. There have been rumors about a FB wearable product for some time, but these are the first available offering.

The frames pack a lot of features into a small product:

• Capture videos and photos via two cameras

• Sync with a new app (Facebook View) to edit and share media

• Recording button

• Voice activation (“Hey Facebook”)

• Speakers on the sides to play audio or take a call via bluetooth connection with a smartphone

While these do not have a screen built into the lenses, it’s safe to say that is a likely future addition as the company reportedly looks to make augmented reality (AR) more integral to the Facebook experience.

And yes, these probably remind you of Snap Spectacles that came out a few years ago. Compared to the Snapchat-powered product, these Facebook specs are probably overall an improvement, with a more “normal” look and a smaller price tag (check out this article for more: Snap Spectacles vs. Ray-Ban Stories).

New Portal products

Facebook has been busy in the hardware department. Not only are the “Stories” shades rolling out now, but FB also announced two new Portal products: Portal Go and Portal+.

Portal Go is meant to provide portability for making video calls on the run. It includes an ultrawide field of view and doubles as a portable speaker.

Portal+ is more focused on business use case, as Facebook makes a push to be the app SMBs use for remote collaboration and efficiency. This product provides a “dedicated screen for work calls” with a larger screen (accommodating up to 25 Zoom participants in one screen” and high-fidelity sound. This coincides with the launch of Portal for Business, providing a squite of work tools and integration with other apps like Microsoft Teams.

Why it matters

Facebook is making bold moves in the product space that diversify its offerings. While these won’t be widely adopted anytime soon, it does hint at long-term strategy from Facebook and deserves attention. It’s also a safe bet that those who do buy these products are going to be even more integrated into Facebook’s social apps.

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Here are a few more shareworthy items we’ve been reading this month…

Channel Updates & News:

• Introducing A New Way to Say “Happy Birthday” on Snapchat (Snapchat blog)

• Breaking Down How Instagram Search Works (IG blog)

• How LinkedIn is using AI to fight unauthorized data scraping (LinkedIn blog)

• Introducing “The Upload,” the first podcast from YouTube (YouTube blog)

• Twitter Spaces Getting a Recording Option (Social Media Today)

• Twitter Experiments with New Visual Editor, Incorporating Fleets Tools (Social Media Today)

• Instagram Adds New 'Map Search' Tool to Maximize Business Discovery (Social Media Today)

• Instagram is Developing a New 'Montage' Feature to Convert Stories to Reels, New 'Favorites' Listing (Social Media Today)

• LinkedIn Expands Professional 'Learning Hub', Makes 40 Popular Course Available for Free (Social Media Today)

• Introducing Facebook Fantasy Games (Facebook blog)

• TikTok World is a free virtual conference on Sept. 28 (TikTok blog)

• Clubhouse rolling out “spatial audio” feature (Clubhouse blog)

• New "Wave" feature coming to Clubhouse (Clubhouse blog)

Stories & Analysis

• The Wall Street Journal’s 5-part “Facebook Files” (See additional commentary here, and Facebook’s response here)

• LinkedIn's Employee Well-Being Report (LinkedIn blog)

• Taylor Swift is a Model Community Manager (SproutSocial blog)

• Visualizing the global #ExtremeWeather conversation on Twitter (Twitter blog)

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