As time goes on and more Google Glass developers start tinkering around with their Explorer kits, we’ll start seeing all types of apps pop up for the device. The fun part about this is that we’re going to see all of the very basic, and necessary, apps being built first. You can share photos to Google+ out of the box with Glass, you can tweet them with GlassTweet, but a new service called Glassnost wants to break those photos outside of those networks onto its own site.
The name of the site, Glassnost, is a send-up to the Russian phrase “glasnost,” which is loosely translated to openness. The app connects to your Glass device, allowing you to share photos to the site, while visitors can “like” them. The killer part of the app is that once your photos get enough “likes,” your Glass device will start getting alerted that what you’ve shared has struck a chord.
That complete feedback loop is a perfect demonstration of why Glass is so interesting. Sure, you can send out photos and videos, see what the weather is and maybe send a text message, but doing something on the device and then getting some sort of feedback as you go about your day is awesome. This social feedback is a first for a Glass app built by third-party developers. Once you start getting likes, a card will pop up in your Glass timeline, showing you which photo got a “like” and when:
It’s basic, but it’s kind of fun to get that immediate feedback on a shot that you just took. Notifications are going to be a sticky situation for developers, as nobody is going to want to know about every single like or comment that they get on a service, since that defeats the whole purpose of the “calm technology” that Glass brings. Glassnost tries to intelligently alert you on the traction of your photos, giving you aggregated like numbers as your photo gets more popular.
Considering that a lot of smartphone users constantly check their device to see how many likes their Facebook status or Instagram photo got, this approach to sharing is a breath of fresh air.
As with any early service, there won’t be a ton of content on Glassnost until it has more users. The Glass community does, however, need a third-party to share their photos with the world, which is a way to cut through all of the noise of whether Glass is the second-coming of Jesus devices or a complete bust. The apps that get bult for Glass and the experience that people have will be the deciding factor on all of that, not the typical and predictable rushes to judgement of the tech press.
