Glass is Leaving Twitter

Glass is Leaving Twitter

When we publish this piece, linking to it will be the last tweet we send. We’ve been slow to leave Twitter since Elon Musk bought it, and that’s on us. The reason we haven’t left yet is simple — leaving Twitter is damaging to our business.

Losing this marketing channel literally knocks a couple percentage points off the likelihood that Glass ultimately succeeds.

There is no blog post or email we can write that will drive the traffic or new members that would replace the number we’d get from staying on Twitter. So why are we leaving? That answer is also simple — it’s against our personal and company values.

Why We Build

When we set out to build Glass three years ago, we wanted to build something different. So we did things differently. None of this is complicated, it’s just hard work and requires sacrifice and focus.

We charged for our product from the start instead of saying “oh, it’s free right now. Don’t worry, we’ll charge one day to make this a sustainable business.”

We intentionally didn’t design an addicting platform. We designed a non-complicated UI with a thoughtful tech stack behind it. We allow links in posts and comments. We didn’t provide endless content via an algorithm or suppress your work because you haven’t danced on video this week.

We built a strong code of conduct into our platform, and then actually enforced it. For example, when a handful of folks were mad that we added pronoun support right after our launch, we just removed them.

We didn’t raise venture capital because we knew it’d put us at odds with our community’s needs — your needs. A seed round of millions is right there for the taking. And on the hard days, it looks good. But we believe that what we’re doing differently with Glass is the foundation of what makes it special and taking that money would fundamentally change what we’re building.

And now we have a thriving community of aligned, caring, thoughtful folks just like you because of that foundation. It's not complicated — it's just hard.

Where to Follow Us & What’s Next

Yes, we’ll be posting on Mastodon. But we’re refocusing our efforts on our internal marketing channel — Highlights. More information on that here.

For this transition to be successful, we’re going to need your help. And if there’s one thing we’re not worried about, it’s you showing up for us and the community we’re building. The only reason we’ve gotten this far is because of your support and it means the world to us. 2023 is going to be a big year for Glass, and it just got harder. But that’s fine. We’re used to it. Besides, we have each other.