Snapchat, picture courtesy Geeksnack

Is Snapchat set to start making technology products that we can actually touch and wear? That’s the big question that could be answered by some of its recent hires.

CNET did some digging and found that the $16bn social media network (used by around 100m teens and younger millennials every day) has about a dozen wearable tech insiders on its payroll, as well as veterans from Nokia and Logitech.

The talk is that if it’s working on anything, it’ll be smart glasses. After all, it’s already owned Vengeance Labs (a smart eyewear startup) since 2014.

Snapchat has more recently hired a couple of key people from Microsoft’s Hololens project and Qualcomm’s Vuforia team, plus some more people with eyewear design (rather than tech) skills and has some intriguing job ads out there that hint at further eyewear development.

Google Glass

Given that Snapchat is all about fast photo and video messaging, smart glasses could work. One of the problems with Google’s original Glass product was that it tried to do so much and looked pretty unappealing as a result.

But smart glasses that are only about photography/video could work… and they’d beat the current crop of wearable cameras that I think still have a way to go before the reality meets the advertising claims.

Still, Snapchat’s not letting on for now so we’ll just have to wait and see.