Dan Burcaw says it himself. There is an influx of talent going on. People want to work in mobile and Denver is a “phenomenal place.”

This isn’t just great news because DE has contributed greatly to the mobile app space and I imagine they’ll keep churning out amazing work in the future, but most importantly, they are great friends of the Glassboard team and their strides make us proud.

I also have to say the announcement on their website really reminds me of Daft Punk. That’s some digital love right there!

In the Apple app store:

On Google Play:

And if you missed it, here is Mashable’s list of 10 apps to dominate your workday, which includes Glassboard!

When we created Glassboard, we implemented the system such that nothing of yours ever gets deleted, unless you explicitly request it (i.e., if you delete a board, everything in it is deleted permanently). However, we also wanted the app to be fast. We also wanted it to be used as sort of an ongoing means of communication, not really an archiving system. This created a dilemma of not being able to see things posted farther back than 100 messages or so, despite those items still existing.

(Premium Glassboard subscribers can download an entire archive of a board, but this is more of a way to back up a board before you delete it.)

Now there’s a way to see it all! For every board you have, you can hit “Show More” to your heart’s content. This feature is just in the web app for now, but please take it for a spin! Safety guaranteed.

Glassboard web app

For a more technical breakdown of other changes in 2.3.3, here is a post by Brent. I’m not sure what some of it means but he does reference not crossing streams which all nerds can relate to.

Besides being thrilled about the design and performance changes this month in Glassboard, it also worked out where we are being featured in the New & Noteworthy for Social Networking apps in iTunes! This comes only a short time after having the Android app featured in Google Play. 2013 is off to a great start for Glassboard!

Big news this week as Instagram announced a major change in their Terms of Service that allows them to use your photos as advertisements. This NYT article does a great job of outlining exactly how the change will affect you. Worth noting is the fact that you cannot opt out!

It should come as no great surprise, after all. One could imagine this was the direction they would be headed after their acquisition by Facebook. It still hurts the community though. People love Instagram and it’s unfair to subject them to these changes for the sake of profit. Unfortunately that’s the business model they’ve had to pursue under Facebook.

Everyone on the Glassboard team has had experience with ad-based revenue models, and while they may work for some companies it’s not something we ever want to revisit.

I’ll say it again to be clear: Glassboard will never sell your photos for any reason. We like how our freemium model has been going and we’re going to stick with that approach.

Before the new Instagram TOS take effect on January 16th, you can opt out in one way: delete your account. Before you do that, here is how you can download all of your photos.

What’s the future of social networking then?

Facebook continues to grow, but alternatives are cropping up. The desire for niche, ad hoc, and private networks are driving growth with apps like Glassboard, Path, and EveryMe. This shift reminds me of when Twitter was introduced and the whole concept of microblogging. It was fun to give it a whirl, but what was the real purpose of composing 140 character messages for the world to read? It took some time, but people began to realize that Twitter was a natural evolution from blogging.

I’d like to think of Glassboard as kind of the same thing: as people are drawn away from their giant social network on Facebook, they realize that small social groups within Glassboard just makes more sense now.

To give you a little background, our Android developer, Nick Bradbury, drew a fairly popular comic strip during college called Dexter. Unfortunately he had to eventually give up this pursuit (software development is much better at paying the bills!), but we can look back on his old comics as he posts them to the Dexter board on Glassboard.

Folks are more than welcome to join the board. In fact, it’s a good way to use Glassboard if you’re not very familiar with it and you don’t yet have others you know using the app. The invite code is ‘dexter’.

The perfect storm has led me to spending way too much time (and money) on reading comic books lately. First, my nearly-six-year-old daughter has graduated from Owly to X-Men (she likes Storm the best) and I wouldn’t be a good father if I didn’t know if the Phoenix was presently alive or dead. Second, Comixology on the iPad has made purchasing comic books instant gratification without taking up any shared bookshelf space.

I’ve found a group of friendly comic book reading grown-ups locally. Rather than clutter up our Twitter feed with discussion of the Marvel Universe, I set up a Glassboard to share what we are reading and enjoying (or not enjoying). It allows us to post reviews, comment easily, bookmark ideas of books to read later, and even attach excerpts of the comics to a post. Most importantly, I can read, post, and comment all without leaving the iPad.

When I get a new comic, I’ll start reading it in Comixology. If I find a particular page I like, I’ll take a screenshot of it by pressing the “On/Off” Switch and the Home button on my iPad simultaneously. Then I continue reading. After I’m done, I open the Photos app and sort through the screenshots for the best one to post.

For example, reading through the classic X-Men “Mutant Massacre” storyline, I find particularly anachronistic page of Rogue visiting Bloomingdales (click for big):

I don’t want to share the whole page, just the top left panel, so I crop it and hit save.

I launch Glassboard from the convenient “Save to Home Screen” icon and type up a quick review.

Even though this is not a native iPad application, the image attachment functionality works just like you’d expect it to. Tap on the camera icon, pick your photo from the iPad’s Photo Library, hit send, and you are done.

It even looks great on the Glassboard app for iPhone.

Adding this image makes all the difference. Often a single panel chosen by a friend is all the “review” you need to decide if a comic is worth reading.

If I had to go to a different device to share my thoughts, I’d never do it. The combination of Comixology and Glassboard on my iPad allows me share my thoughts before I forget to, directly to the people who would enjoy reading them the most.

Looking over the Sepia Labs board this holds true despite the primary purpose of the board being for work discussion. Like any other group we still share pictures of our kids/pets/food just like anyone else.

Out of everything posted to Glassboard, 8% of messages include location. This was a big surprise to us since we assumed it would be more around 2%.

For every new message, there are 1.61 comments on it. There are many many messages without comments, and somewhere out there there’s a message with something like 100 comments on it.

Finally, people have gone back and deleted .39% of posts to Glassboard. I’m glad to see this oft-asked for feature used so much!