If you haven’t heard, there’s a new photo-sharing app called Glass. It’s an iPhone-only (unfortunately) app, designed for photographers to share photography, get feedback, and of course, to enjoy others photos too. They specifically say that it is not designed to replace Instagram, which I definitely find comforting.
Instead, Glass is a paid subscription-based app[1] for photographers. While I’m sure most people would enjoy the minimalistic interface, and how the focus is really placed on the photos, there’s a ton of things that are obviously geared more towards photographers showing off their work and receiving feedback from the community, rather than the average person sharing selfies[2].
There’s support for P3 colour gamut, EXIF information for each photo, and a lack of “likes”. The only interaction that you can have on a photo is a comment. And the only interaction you can have with a fellow photographer, is to follow them.
This leads me to my favourite aspect of the app, the simplistic nature of how the app works fundamentally. There are four “tabs”[3] at the bottom of the app, each of them showing a different screen. There’s the purest form of a reverse chronological timeline that can exist, which just shows a stream of photos from the photographers that you follow. Then there’s the discover/search/community tab, which is essentially how you discover or search for photographers. And the last two are your profile, which shows your own photos in a list, and also your notifications, which can only consist of two things: follows, and comments.
Obviously, the app won’t appeal to all people, given that it requires a subscription fee, but I think that will be beneficial for the community.
At the same time, since there is a regular fee being paid, users (including myself) will be expecting a certain level of updates and a few extra niceties that you won’t get with something like Instagram. The next things I personally would like to see in Glass would be an iPad app, a way to view your profile/photos on the web, and also a way to categorise your photos/account to help improve discoverability.
You can find me and my photos on Glass at @christopher.