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Coordinate and organize: Glassboard at WWDC

During WWDC earlier this month I was on a couple boards devoted to the event. There were quite a few different boards out there: teams used Glassboard to stay in touch during the conference and after-hours revelers used the app to meet up and imbibe. Now that I’ve had time to recover, I’d like to share some thoughts from others about their Glassboard use during the week.

Mike Hay, from Black Pixel:

“Using Glassboard to organize loose groups of people at WWDC was excellent. The product features were perfect for that use.

The app was reliable and fast. Notifications and messages arrived at the same time (a feature others can’t match) and the app did not crash in a week of use.”

Justin Williams, of Second Gear Software:

“There were three apps I found to be essential during WWDC 12 and Glassboard was one of them. Coordinating what sessions my team was attending during the day as well as what hijinks my friends and colleagues were getting into at night is way easier than in previous years thanks to Sepia Labs.”

And finally, Jacqui Cheng of Ars Technica, via Daring Fireball:

“Glassboard was so great at WWDC this year. At this point I don’t know how I did conferences without it.”

People had constructive criticism for us too. That’s why I love showing off an app like Glassboard to other software developers. They are honest and can astutely describe what they would change in the app. Thanks everyone for your continued feedback. We really appreciate it!

Tell us how you Glassboard by sending us a message at stories@glassboard.com.

Feeling the love!

We just wanted to say thank you to everyone for the overwhelming response over Glassboard 2.0! Lots of highlights to share…

• We’ve quadrupled the number of users in the past month
• Glassboard was featured on Google Play
• Nick Bradbury was just written up in the Knoxville News
• And he just delivered the keynote at Codestock
• WWDC was last week, and we got some great shout outs like this and this and this

But what’s most important is that people are finding Glassboard useful. As our own Brent Simmons put it, “the whole thing feels great.”

So thank you — we’re inspired and humbled!

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!

How do you Glassboard?