About
We built Glass for you
For years, it felt like we didn't have a home for our photography on the internet — so we decided to build one. We built Glass for you, but we also built Glass for us. Glass is founded by Tom Watson and Stefan Borsje. João Dordio builds our native iPhone and iPad applications.
Independent and proud
With your help, we're building a sustainable home for photographers. Glass is an independent company — no venture capital or outside funding. Because we charge for our platform, we can offer it free of ads, invasive data tracking, and engagement algorithms.
Always improving
We launched Glass in August 2021. We've been actively listening to our community and expanding Glass beyond an iPhone app to be a true community platform for photographers. More improvements come all the time.
Team
Tom Watson
Founder, Design and Product
Tom Watson is a co-founder of Glass. Previously, he worked as the Director of Product at Framer, and was an early Design Manager and Product Designer at both Pinterest and Facebook. He fell in love with photography at 11 with a disposable camera on a family vacation to Hawaii. Originally from Oregon, Tom is based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands with his wife, two boys, and dog.
Stefan Borsje
Founder, Engineering
Stefan Borsje is a co-founder of Glass. Previously, he worked as the Director of Engineering at Framer and as a Solutions Architecture Manager at Amazon Web Services. He was the technical co-founder and CTO at Karma WiFi. He's not being rude, he's just Dutch. Stefan is based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands with his wife, son, and dog.
João Dordio
Apple Platform Engineering
João is an Apple platforms developer who has been in love with Apple products since the iPod nano. From small startups to big corporations, he has had the privilege of working on all Apple platforms, but iOS remains his true love. He is a part-time photographer shooting with Nikon and telephoto lenses. João lives in Lisbon, Portugal with his wife and 3 kids.
Updates
Series is our take on carousels and albums — a collection of photos that you can organize, re-order and add to over time. Series are an incredible tool to help you group and organize your photographs as you tell ongoing stories about your photography. Whether you’re documenting once-in-a-lifetime trips through the arctic or cataloging your daily 365 project, Series is the next step forward in how to share your photography online.
We opened up as much of our platform as we could, showcasing Explore, Members, Comments, Categories, Cameras, and Lenses! We added new privacy controls, laying the groundwork for more features in the future, and providing granular control over how much non-Members can see.
We shifted how we call photos from our backend and Glass feels faster than ever. These speed improvements are felt on Web and Android too. Good luck catching the loader when you're scrolling the main feed.
Glass feels right at home in Capture One. Long adored as one of the best platforms for editing and managing a photography workflow, we're thrilled to include publishing to Glass in Capture One.
Our AI-powered Search and team-curated Explore is here! A true game changer for exploring Glass. Seeing is believing — just dive on in.
Early Access to features! A cute badge! Free yearly memberships to share with your friends! Extra support for Glass as we continue building a home for photographers.
Just in case you want to spruce up your Home Screen, we've got you covered.
Pin photos to the top of your profile to stay organized and highlight your best work. You can also now experiment and hide photos from your Public Profile. Easily choose which photos you want to keep in the community and which you want to show on your profile.
With threaded comments, you can quickly reply and keep your place in your back and forth without sorting through other comments. A small shift equaling a huge improvement.
Highlights, which surface the best from our community, are now in app on iPhone, iPad, Web, Android, and Windows. Notifications for Product Announcements and Highlights were also added to this release.
A wonderful way to explore Glass. Camera and Lens feeds are such a great way to find inspiring work with gear you already own or to scope out your next purchase.
Last but not least, Glass for Android is here! If before launch, you had told us we'd be on all major platforms in less than 18 months, we wouldn't have believed you.
Glass is platform agnostic, but that doesn't mean we don't want to be everywhere. Windows creators are an important part of our community and we're thrilled to be able to offer them a native app.
On our one-year anniversary, we're thrilled to open Glass up to anyone. This is just the beginning of Glass, and we're thrilled to keep building a supportive and sustainable community with you.
Endless inspiration at your fingertips on Glass. Bookmarks just makes it easier to return to the best of the best.
Pixel peeking at it's finest. No matter the screen, you can dive into the details.
Phones are incredible for taking photos, but looking at photos? That'll always be better on the biggest screen. Exploring Glass on Web is a beauty.
We don't like direct comparisons to other platforms because we're building something different with Glass. That said, high time for a photography community to have an exceptional iPad app.
What would a like button look like if it didn't power an advertising network for a shopping app? Glad you asked. It'd look like Appreciations.
Surfacing the best of our community members, sharing their knowledge and inspiration. Interviews, guides, and get to know some of our members.
Glass is a community, not a marketing channel. But that doesn't mean our optional Public Profiles aren't an incredible way to showcase your work.
Improving discovery and a new way to explore the community? Don't mind if we do.
Invite systems almost exclusively build exclusive communities. Which is why once we worked through our waiting list, we removed it as quickly as possible.
After nearly two years of building nights and weekends, we opened up Glass to the world and were immediately blown away by the response.
Newsletter
Never miss a Highlight or Glass announcement.