Glass: The Photography Community Without Manipulative Algorithms or Ads

I just started using Glass. The Glass online platform has only been around for about three years, growing slowly and carefully by the efforts of its co-founders Tom Watson and Stefan Borsje, both with extensive background experience in designing and engineering at other platforms like Facebook and Pinterest. You can learn more about Glass here.

It's a Subscription Model (about $40/year): Although Glass currently only has tens of thousands of users (not millions like Instagram or Facebook), the founders are influenced by their subscribers and not by venture capitalists. The community is also focused just on photographers and their photography.

BENEFITS of this Model:

• Community Experience - emphasizing authentic interactions without the pressure of frequent posting

• Privacy - avoiding tracking behavior

• Beautiful display features - high-quality image profiles with almost any aspect ratio, minimal compression, and the ability to create image series

What others are saying about Glass:

TechRadar - “For years, social media platforms have become increasingly centered around algorithms, advertisements and distracting features rather than the celebration and enjoyment of content in its purest form. This is not the case on Glass.”

PetaPixel - “… it's an absolutely lovely, exquisitely-designed app. It's downright serene scrolling through my Glass timeline…”

Om.co - “Glass is a return to the simplicity of Instagram circa 2012. It's a social network specially tailored for looking at and posting beautiful photography.”

Apple Insider - “Glass welcomes both amateur and professional photographers, whether the user takes their photos with an iPhone or with expensive top-of-the-range equipment.”

TechCrunch - (from an interview with the co-founders) “By self-funding Glass to this point, and to now be funded by members, we're able to align our decisions with our community. High growth startups use tracking, ads, and algorithms to hook their users. They're endless engagement machines, fighting for your attention. We're able to forego all of that and we think that's what makes Glass special.”

Laughing Squid - “Glass immediately strikes me as the best possible crossover between Flickr and Instagram.”

COMPARING GLASS with FLICKR and INSTAGRAM: I joined Flickr in 2009 — my first experience with a social media platform for photographers. I loved it! Image displays were beautiful and without the degrading over-compression you often experience nowadays from Facebook and Instagram. I uploaded hundreds of my best images and had wonderful interactions with other photographers. As a full-time photographer that relied on photo licensing to make a living, I was amazed at the number of photo editors that were constantly contacting me for permission to license images from my Flickr collection. Much of this started to dwindle by about 2016. Although SmugMug purchased Flickr in 2018 from Yahoo! and saved the 100+ million accounts (and billions of photos) from certain death, the platform popularity has languished from lack of upgrades. While I do not network on Flickr nearly as much as I used to, I still use it to store many of my best images (unlimited storage for about $73/year).

I joined Instagram in 2015. Although images on Instagram had significant display limitations due to the platform's image aspect ratio restrictions, organic engagement was incredible! I had great organic engagement with my posts until about 2022. It seems to me that Instagram is now having to pay off its venture capital investors by making the free platform turn a profit. In order to get views and likes you either have to play their game by manipulating the algorithm (posting more frequently and with content that engages viewers for a longer period of time, like video reels) or pay to get your posts seen by more of your own followers.

I continue to use Instagram because of its reach, and I occasionally pay to get more eyeballs on some posts. However, I refuse to play the manipulation game by adjusting my content to fit their algorithms.

I just recently joined Glass. I currently have only 11 posted images: four in a "Series" grouping for blue hour images and seven in a series of "Milky Way Nightscapes" images. Here's a link to my home page on Glass. If you go to my home page, you'll see something like this, if you're viewing it on a laptop, using a web browser:

If you're viewing my page on your smartphone, with the Glass app (support for iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows), it'll look something like this:

Great INTERACTION on Glass: I love the interaction I'm already receiving from other photographers in the Glass community. Glass reminds me a little of the old Flickr, but with better features that allow me to more easily discover new creatives that I may want to connect with. I'm already starting to get new ideas for improving my own images or my overall approach to photography. Many of these new ideas are coming from people that have nothing to do with my focus on "nightscape" photography!

PROMOTING Yourself on Glass: You can promote your photography on Glass via your bio and the embedded link (going to your website or another platform). I don't see this as effective as posting on Instagram (which has a broader audience of mostly non-photographers), unless you provide a service to other photographers, such as workshops or printing. I will still be keeping my Instagram account and occasionally do paid advertising to reach other audiences.

TRY out GLASS: Glass has a 14-day free trial period for new subscribers. If you decide to continue, you can get your first year for 25% off ($29.99) the regular price of $39.99/year by using MY PROMO LINK, or by entering the code ROYCE in both the Play and App Store. NOTE: I am receiving no compensation for referring people to Glass.

Please feel free to ask me any questions (below) about Glass (Glass also has its own page of FAQ).