Everyone is competing with Snapchat. Its competitors are not shying away from copying its features. However, one can hardly blame them. Snapchat is shattering all numbers. It is growing in a very rapid and explosive way.

Interestingly though, Snapchat has not reacted to any of the direct copying attempts (especially from Instagram and its parent company Facebook). On the contrary, it continued focusing on its platform, refining it, and creating a better experience for its users.

Apparently, Snapchat management has decided to direct its energy in the direction it believes it would pay off in the long run instead of wasting that energy on fights with copycats.

They made two new moves last Friday. The first was a clear indication of change. The company is no longer called Snapchat. It is now Snap Inc. This revelation was made by the company’s CEO Evan Spiegel last Friday when he wrote on a blog post “Today we are changing the name of our company to Snap Inc.”

The second was revealing of a new product – video-recording sunglasses called Spectacles. The glasses contain a 115-degree-angle lens that will allow its user to record up to 30 seconds of video, a Snap Inc. spokesman told Mashable. The snaps can then be transferred to your Snapchat Memories over WiFi or Bluetooth to your phone. Or you can save them on the Spectacles themselves until you’re near a phone, as reported by Washington Post. The glasses are expected to cost around $129.99 and will come in one-size-fits-all variants of black, teal and coral.

Spectacles are designed in an attempt to move away from being constrained by phone cameras.

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel told the Wall Street Journal that recording video or taking pictures with a phone puts “a wall in front of your face.” Spectacles, on the other hand, will allow wearers to record without holding anything, so they can really show off that brunch or keg stand, as reported by Mashable.

However, in a closer look, the move is much more than a video recording sunglasses. It is a manifestation that Snapchat is planning to grow beyond its social media platform – the sunglasses could only be a way to test the water. “When we were just getting started it made sense to name our company Snapchat Inc., because Snapchat was our only product,” Spiegel wrote. “Now that we are developing other products, like Spectacles, we need a name that goes beyond just one product but doesn’t lose familiarity and fun of our team and brand.”

There is no better example of companies who made their fame and fortune in the online world before trying their chances in other fields, including hardware, than Google. Snapchat could be following the same path in which it grows beyond its social media application into other products and services.

I have to admit that I am personally persuaded by the strategy of Snap Inc. They want to depict themselves as market leaders, the destination of choice to users and fans rather than a copycat, a follower who is trying to imitate the steps of the leader. How successful such strategic moves would be is dependent on so many variables, particularly the quality of the new products and service the company will provide.