Instagram has quickly become one of the most popular social media platforms in the world. At last glance, the photo-sharing service had 200-million active users. Altogether, these users have uploaded more than 20-billion photos to the service. One of Instagram‘s biggest draws is the ease with which users can apply tweaks in the form of “filters.” These filters increase or decrease saturation, remove or add color, and add a number of other effects to make pictures look unique and professional, even when most have been taken with a smartphone.
Hoping to tap into Instagram‘s huge popularity, Tens, an Edinburgh, United Kingdom-based start-up, has launched an Indiegogo campaign for its new sunglasses and lenses. The biggest selling point? Tens lenses are customized to make the real world look as though you’re looking directly through an Instagram filter. Imagine that boring walk to work everyday transformed into a beautiful work of art saturated with your favorite hues, or a day on the beach that looks like something out of your travel magazine. That’s the sort of thing Tens is aiming for, and with more than $200,000 raised since the company began its crowd-funding efforts on May 7, the company’s dream looks to be morphing into reality.
The New Technology Could Give People a Much Needed Push to Actually Wear Their Sunglasses
With over one billion pairs of sunglasses sold annually, you wouldn’t think getting people to wear them would be such an issue. Not wearing sunglasses, thereby exposing your eyes to damaging UV rays, can irreparably damage your eyes, leading to short-term problems with sight and more chronic problems down the road. While a huge number of people own sunglasses and simply forget to put them on, one in six people surveyed in a Vision Council poll said they make sure to wear their shades in hopes of protecting their eyes.
Unfortunately, it’s not something seen as all that important across the board. However, if companies like Tens can make wearing sunglasses just a touch more attractive by tying them to one of the most popular social media phenomenons on the planet, effectively putting the fun into functionality, people might start to take better care of their eyes, if only incidentally.