A New Home for Glassboard

for-sale-by-ownerThree years ago I joined a team that set out to create something different: a social app that values your privacy. We wanted to make an app which enabled you to share only with people you trust – no privacy settings necessary.

We’d all seen the coming storm: we knew that concerns about privacy were the next big thing. We wanted to build an app that said, “privacy is important, don’t give it up.”

But we failed.

Glassboard didn’t succeed, and is in need of a new home.

Our biggest blunder was that our focus on privacy made it hard to get started with Glassboard. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc., let you immediately find and follow your friends, but after you installed Glassboard you felt like you were the only one using it. Not exactly a great first run experience.

We also had a lousy business model, but that’s a post for another day.

I continue to believe that we need more software that respects your privacy. I look at the current crop of privacy-violating social apps and shudder when I think of where they’ll take us a decade or two down the road. Or even next year.

I’d love to see Glassboard taken over by someone who shares our commitment to privacy and can take it where we never could.