Glass — Photography Community 12+

I know I’m not alone in feeling like Instagram just isn’t doing it for me anymore - the ads, the influencers, the reels. Need I say more? It’s just not a place for photos anymore, and that makes me so sad. I’ve been looking for a replacement for a while and recently found Glass. At first, I thought there’s no way I’m paying to use it. But after reading about the team and their mission, I figured it was something worth supporting. It’s still in it’s early days, but the more photographers who use it and support it, the better it will be. I actually feel excited to use it - something I haven’t felt about a social media app in a long time. There’s beautiful content and folks are excited to share their thoughts. It’s the start of a great community, and I’m excited to be a part of it!

I think this is a solid first step. The issue is I’m not sure the founders have established an identity for Glass outside of it not being Instagram. That’s reflected in the incredibly small feature set and some of the design decisions that feel a little aimless. The discovery tab is awful, full stop. Avatar icons are too big, photos are too small, sideways scrolling on all these tiny photos with no way to preview isn’t fun. Zooming into landscape images by default is also strange. Launching this app without a way to view a user’s full collection of images at a glance feels like a mistake. How did it launch without a way to edit captions? The app was in private beta for a minute and it makes me curious what it was like then.

There’s a lot of workshopping happening in their support pages and I worry they’re going to design this by committee and turn it into a hodgepodge of conflicting ideas. The work I’m referring to that needs to be done isn’t expensive. It doesn’t cost you anything to establish a set of concrete desires for your product. Does Glass want to foster a photography community and get people conversing with one another or does it want to be a portfolio site with some engagement functionality?

I’ve already subscribed for the year, I’m rooting for you all to turn this into something. Figure out what you want to be and pls god get more women on your platform.