My Thoughts on Glass

Reviews

1 Sep

Glass is a new photo sharing app aimed at professional and amateur photographers. A photo feed unpolluted with ads or manipulated by algorithms. Will people migrate away from Instagram?

Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram recently said on Twitter that Instagram is no longer a photo sharing app. Those days are gone and we have all seen our likes and followers drop—at least I hope it’s not just me!

Are people tired of double tapping as they scroll through their timeline? What’s the point ‘liking’ anymore when you don’t receive the little red heart back. It seems there are plenty of disgruntled Instagrammers with theories on algorithms. Are our photos even being seen by our followers anymore? Has Instagram created a void for a new photo sharing app like Glass?

A couple of weeks ago I was sent an invite code and promptly downloaded the app—currently IOS only. I was sceptical at first and just couldn’t see the point of another photo sharing platform. Glass is aimed at both professional and amateur photographers, why would I want to pay to showcase my photos to other photographers? I can do that for free on Instagram and get plenty of double-taps and pats on the back. Remember Flickr? Still free with ads but has a vast photography community.

I started uploading 2-3 photos a day picking up some followers driven mainly from sharing #mythoughtsonglass over on Twitter. Initial engagement was low and with no view stats there’s no way of knowing if your work is even being seen at all. This is something which I think should be included with a subscription based sharing platform.

The layout is clean, simple and easy to use. However, as there is no search facility you are limited to scrolling though endless uncategorised photos. No hashtags and no way of finding photos, themes or styles you are interested in.

You can follow other users and they can follow you back. You can leave comments on their photos and they can comment on yours. It’s simple and invites interaction and feedback from other users.

I decided I would only follow back work in was interested in and not follow back automatically to try and gain as many followers as possible. I wanted this to be more about the photos than praise.

Some key thoughts:

Images are displayed full screen and the quality is good but my poor thumb is going to suffer from RSI from all the scrolling.
The avatar takes up too much room on the browse screen. I’d rather see more of the photographers work than their face.
Images with landscape format automatically zoom in, hiding half of the image.
Uploaded photos can’t be deleted.
Search feature is a must. I gave up looking through endless photos for images I am interested in.

As the invites rolled out I noticed people offering their invite codes to female photographers only. What was all that about? I counted the first 100 accounts on the app’s feed and there were just 3 females. It would be unfair to point the sexist finger at Glass but it was really interesting to see and is a topic being questioned and shared more and more on social media. I’m sure Glass could easily provide the male/female ratio.

Over the coming weeks/months Glass will no doubt be adding features like search, categories and maybe even the ability to ‘like’ something. But the subscription and lack of features after the free two weeks shatters my Glass.

My trial period has now ended and I won’t be subscribing. I not looking to pay a subscription to show my work to other photographers.

Glass is free for 2 weeks then £4.49/month or an early bird offer of £25.99/year, otherwise a usual price of £50/year. I still have some codes left, let me know if you want one—male or female?