Instagram started out of founder Kevin Systrom’s love for photography, but many photographers don’t see the app as an outlet for creativity or place for community like they once did.
"As an amateur photographer, I am craving "community not comparison," commentor Kartik Parija wrote on Product Hunt.
A lot of catalysts can be credited for this change: Facebook acquiring Instagram, an algorithm that favors likes, filters and society’s obsession with perfection, social giants like TikTok popping up and pushing competitors to shift their priorities — to name a few.
Even Instagram admits they’ve got new priorities, as evidenced by this quote resurfaced by an article on Om.
"We're no longer a photosharing app," Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, a division of Facebook
Glass is trying to fill the void. The new photosharing app and community for photographers launched on Product Hunt on Tuesday. Its bootstrapping founders, Tom Watson and Stefan Borsje, met while working together at Framer. Watson is ex-Facebook and ex-Pinterest, counting over 20 years of experience in product design. He told Om:
“We hope to build a community for all levels of photographers to learn, grow, and generally nerd out about photography.”
So how is Glass different? At the top level, it’s private and subscription-based. If that sounds like deja-vu, it might be because we just wrote about Neeva, the “anti-Google,” a new search engine from an ex-Google team with a subscription-based and ad-free model. And then there was Monarch from a founder who’s ex-Mint with a similar story. The move away from pure ad monetization continues, but the bottom line effects on big tech is yet to be determined.
On a features level, Glass also steers clear of public counts (Instagram has been experimenting with this) and engagement algorithms. Photographers will be excited by things like P3 color profile support, minimal compression, and EXIF data behind your photos.
See more of the features and what the community is saying about Glass's entrance among its predecessors, from Instagram to Flickr.
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