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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!

Glassboard 1.2 is here!

We’ve just released Glassboard 1.2 into iTunes and the Android Market. Go get it!

Here’s what’s new:

- Invitations: Inviting people to a board couldn’t be easier. Now you can create and send out an invite code that people can use to request an invite (yes, you’ll still maintain control over who joins and who doesn’t). Look for “Invite code” on the invite screen! If you’d like more information on invite codes, visit our Invitations FAQ
- Compose messages in landscape. Yes, finally!
- Compose a message direct from the news feed. Just pick the board you want to send a message to and you’re off.
- Background uploading. You’ll no longer have to wait around while your media uploads, background uploading allows you to continue to use the app while your photos, videos are uploaded.
- Assorted bug fixes and performance enhancements.

We hope you like the updates. If you have any questions, comments or other feedback, please let us know. Thank you!

The Glassboard team
http://glassboard.com/support/

Glassboard update fixes notifications

The new version of Glassboard we’re releasing today fixes the bug we were having with push notifications. By downloading the new version you will now see notifications (with sound!) coming through for new posts on your boards.

Download version 1.0.4 of Glassboard for iPhone.

Download version 1.1.28 of Glassboard for Android.

Want to know more about notifications in Glassboard? Visit our FAQs page.

We apologize for any inconvenience this caused anyone. If you have questions send a message to support@sepialabs.com.

Glassboard team wants your feedback. Vote for features on UserVoice

We’ve heard lots of very interesting feedback from our users so far. We’ve kept track of everything in a big list, but we wanted to really see what is most popular. There is now a UserVoice forum for Glassboard, where you can submit ideas and vote them up.

Another great thing about UserVoice is that it gives us a way to show everyone what we’ve decided on moving forward with or what we’ll have to pass up on for now.

Glassboard on UserVoice: http://glassboard.uservoice.com/forums/132970-glassboard

All users get 10 votes. As we mark things as complete your votes will free up. Have at it!

And as always, if you have any questions about Glassboard, visit our support page.

A big thank you to Glassboard users. We’re listening!

The Sepia Labs team would love to thank everyone who has downloaded Glassboard so far, the feedback has been tremendous! We’ve had a lot of positive comments, great feature requests, and helpful bug reports. Thank you! We can’t wait to see Glassboard get even bigger.

Speaking of feedback, now is a great time to let you know that we actually do read it. All of it. We consider every feature request (we’ve got a growing list) and look into bug reports where we can (those of you that have sent screenshots and detailed steps to reproduce have been especially helpful). We can’t respond to everything but we’ll try. Just know that whether you’re posting to Twitter, on our Facebook page, in the Google Groups (iPhone, Android, and soon Windows Phone 7) or sending us an email, it will always be seen by someone on the team.

Now to address a few points that we’ve noticed have been hot topics:

1) Not seeing a confirmation email. We’ve found that a lot of spam filters are blocking the confirmation email when you initially sign up to Glassboard. We also don’t yet support email addresses with characters like ‘+’ signs. We’re working on ways around this, but in the meantime if you haven’t yet received this email, send a message to support@sepialabs.com with the email address that you’ve signed up with and we’ll get it fixed.

2) I want to be able to choose a person’s email address from contacts, not have the app just select the first one (iPhone). Good point. We’ll look into making this process easier.

3) Glassboard, Y U NO HAVE WEB APP/DESKTOP APP? We wanted the initial launch to focus totally on mobile. More and more people are using their mobile phones to access the web. We hear you though: we are seriously considering a web and/or desktop app, so keep the requests coming if that’s what you want to see. A handful of folks have mentioned that their Grandma does not own an iPhone. Well? Why not buy her one? What could go wrong?

4) On the iPhone, if I tap a notification that includes an image I’m taken to a page that I can’t back out of. We’re looking into a fix for this. In the meantime, close the app completely (even from the background) and restart it.