This article was published on August 22, 2012

The cross-platform social collaboration engine Glassboard gets a $5/month business model


The cross-platform social collaboration engine Glassboard gets a $5/month business model

Back when we reviewed the major update to Glassboard, which we called the ‘Path for work’, we wondered how the app would make money. Now we know, as Sepia Labs has just announced Glassboard premium, a $5 per month subscription service that offers a set of upgraded benefits.

Since I initially took a look at the update, I’ve had a chance to use it at events and other functions and It’s proven invaluable. At WWDC, for instance, I was able to join temporary boards that were inhabited by a bunch of other attendees and developers. It was fantastic to have a ‘pop-up’ community that I could turn to for dinner plans or to take the pulse of the changes Apple announced.

One of my primary concerns, though, was how Glassboard planned to stay around as a viable entity, seeing as the app was free. I interviewed Sepia’s Brent Simmons at the time and he said they didn’t have anything to share but that they were actively working on it.

Glassboard premium is the answer to that question, and it comes with a nice list of perks for the $5/month fee.

  • Bookmarking messages. Premium will allow you to tag messages that you’d like to reference later, saving them in a central list.
  • Exporting boards. You can export boards as a web page that includes all pictures, video and text from the board and you can share it with others. Some boards are, by their nature, temporary, so this is a very cool way to save the content for later and still keep it in context.
  • Increase from 100MB to 1GB of storage on all boards. A bump in storage means users can shove more media inside without worrying about hitting the cap.
  • Unlimited number of boards. For heavy users, this will be nice, as you don’t have to cull your boards as you reach your limit.
  • Transfer board control to another premium member. In the case of some temporary boards, they can get a bit daunting maintenance-wise, especially if they grow quickly. Letting any premium users hand off control to another is a nice additional feature.
As a cross-platform collaboration tool, Glassboard has some really fantastic features implemented extremely carefully. The addition of a premium model makes me rest much easier about its future as well.
When I asked Simmons about Glassboard’s social model, he had this to say:
“I think that real-life is more complicated than what Facebook and Twitter model,” says Simmons. “Should my co-workers all be my friends on Facebook? Is my wife just another Facebook-friend? No….there are different kinds of relationships between people — and that matters.”

I tend to agree. You can sign up for Glassboard Premium here.

➤ Glassboard for Android
➤ Glassboard for iPhone
➤ Glassboard on the Web

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