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Reflections on the launch of Glassboard 2.0: What we learned from you.

I love a major launch like this. The flood of feedback has been very helpful to us on how we can improve future versions of Glassboard. Many thanks for the bug reports, feedback, and suggestions you’ve provided. Here’s the list of top things we learned from you:

1. You are very curious about how we’re going to make money.

Overwhelmingly people are asking about our revenue stream. And the question is always posed in good faith, to the effect of, “I love Glassboard but if you don’t make money doesn’t that mean you’ll disappear?” For right now, we want to grow our user base. Our goal then will be to adhere to a freemium business model: there will be snazzy features you can pay extra for but the base version will stay free. Here is a blog post we did that goes into more detail.

2. You want to edit and delete posts.

This is the number one feature people are asking for, and rightfully so. It can be frustrating to post something incorrect and have no way of remedying it. This feature simply didn’t make it into 2.0, but we’d love to have it in a future version of the app.

3. The app looks nice and all, but you’re not sure how you would use it.

There is a point where Glassboard just clicks. For me personally I didn’t use it with friends until recently, when we started a Concerts board to share pics and video from shows we go to. It’s a great way to find each other too. There will come a point in time where you’ll want to share things with a small group and Glassboard will be the perfect fit. As John Gruber points out:

“I didn’t get it at first. Just didn’t see how I’d use it. But then I went to a weekend-long conference where a dozen or so of my friends set up a board on Glassboard. We shared notes, jokes, links, and things like where we were going to eat and drink. All of it private, with instant SMS-like notification of new messages and comments. Now I don’t know what I’d do without Glassboard.”

4. You don’t really see how we’re different from Path/Everyme/et al.

There are a number of small social networks out there like us, and they all provide different utility to users. Essentially Glassboard is most useful for small teams and businesses that would like a better way to collaborate than email. But it’s also good for other things like conferences and college courses. It comes down to what you want in an app. Do you want discretion and privacy? That’s Glassboard. Do you want Facebook and LinkedIn integration? You’ll have to go with Everyme. I go into more detail about Glassboard vs. other apps on Quora: Path; Everyme.

5. You think the app is useless or ugly.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but it’s much appreciated if you are able to back it up with logic or at the very least some snark. And if you mention it in a public forum like Twitter, I will likely respond because my snark-fu is STRONG. If you mention how you hate Glassboard on Glassboard, well you’re in luck because we will never see it.

Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments or target @glassboard on Twitter!

Written by Jenny Blumberg

Version 2.0 of Glassboard is a killer app

[Movie trailer guy voice]: THIS SUMMER. IN A WORLD. GLASSBOARD, THE KILLER APP, EMERGES TO TAKE ON SOCIAL NETWORKS AND EMAIL **explosions**

Read more here.

Written by Jenny Blumberg

Introducing Glassboard 2.0

We just released Glassboard 2.0 for Android and iPhone — and added a web app. We’ve made it easier, faster, better-looking, and available from more places.

Here’s what’s new:

Web App At your desk it’s often easier to go to a web site than to pick up your phone — and not everybody has a smart phone yet. So we built the Glassboard web app.
Reply Via Email Do you have friends still tied to their Blackberrys? Invite them and they’ll be able to join in just by replying to email.
File Sharing Share documents, talk about them, and know that everyone is seeing the same thing at the same time. Just attach a file to your message or comment.
Easier to get people on boards Instead of digging through your address book, you can create an invitation code for your board and share it. When people enter the invitation code in Glassboard they’ll automatically join your board. No approval is necessary — and as the board chair you still control who’s in and who’s out.
New Design The apps now show your board list and other options in a sidebar to the left of the news feed. Just tap the button in the upper left to open it.
Photos and Videos Gallery Glassboard now provides a gallery for recently-posted photos and videos.

There are plenty more changes we haven’t highlighted here, but you’ll see them when you try it out.

Written by Walker Fenton

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Written by Jenny Blumberg

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Written by Jenny Blumberg

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Written by Jenny Blumberg

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Written by Jenny Blumberg

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Written by Jenny Blumberg

Pair is your bedroom, Path is your rec room, and Glassboard is your boardroom

Could 2012 be the year private sharing networks come of age? This is what Eric Eldon asks in this piece on TechCrunch. With more and more people shunning Facebook because of their lackadaisical approach to privacy and their focus on targeting ads to you, it could happen. We very well may be witnessing the end of Web 2.0 and the beginning of the era of Mobile.

Your social networks in the palm of your hand

We wanted to focus on a great mobile experience when we created Glassboard. This is the same approach other small social networks are taking, like Pair and Path. Mobile could be Facebook’s downfall. The Facebook mobile experience is clunky. People want something streamlined and simple when they are on their phones, which is what we strive for in our app. Facebook may never be able to master the mobile experience because it’s too big, you have too many different groups of friends/family/colleagues on it and there are too many features. A gigantic social network doesn’t lend itself to mobile, the space is simply better occupied by apps like Glassboard and Path.

Too many social networks? What, like in real life?

There is some resistance to small social networks, and it’s keeping people attached to Facebook. It’s a common complaint that I’ve read in comments on blog posts about social networks. People fear that there are too many social networks that you have to participate in, that you’ll have accounts all over the place. So? Isn’t that how things are in real life? If Pair is for the bedroom and Path is for rec room, think of Glassboard as the boardroom. The most stand out use case for Glassboard is how we’ve used it as a company from the very beginning. It has provided a simple and private way for us as a group to communicate, and it is refreshingly separate from the other means of communication we use for our friends and loved ones.

Written by Jenny Blumberg

Number of steps for Facebook privacy settings: 12. Number of steps for Glassboard privacy settings: 0.

This article from Business Insider outlines each of 12 steps you need to work through in order to have complete control over your privacy settings in Facebook. It’s obviously a complicated process, so much so that Consumer Reports refers to it as “labyrinthian.”

Who wants to take the time to do all that? It’s unfortunate that guarding your privacy has become so intricate.

Now is a great time to remind all of you that Glassboard has zero privacy settings. It is private all of the time.

Written by Jenny Blumberg