The Glassboard Gamble

From the Glassboard blog: Big Brother is not watching you!

I especially like this post because it’s written by one of our server developers — it’s written by a guy who knows the technical details, because he’s half of the team that designed and implemented those details.

This reminds me that I haven’t been that explicit here about what we’re doing with Glassboard. Our theory is that people sometimes need private and secure communication with groups.

You might have a small team at work, or you might want to post pictures of your kids with family only, or you might want to organize the next night out with friends.

You don’t need all that communication to appear on Twitter or Facebook or Path. You don’t need an app that snarfs up your contacts or calendar without your permission.

When you need privacy, you expect an app to respect your privacy in every way possible, from the client apps to the server.

To summarize the post on the Glassboard blog: your data is so private that even we can’t see it without going to extraordinary lengths. (Brian likened it to the steps needed to launch a nuclear weapon.)

The Gamble

Here’s the gamble: people care about privacy, but I’m not sure that enough people care about privacy. I hope so, though, because, sheesh.

The current app isn’t great right now. I look at it and say “Meh.” (It’s important that we’re totally honest about this app.)

We’re working on updates, and so you can expect improvements. If you want to check it out now, that’s cool — or wait till updates arrive. (If you don’t have a need for privacy, then don’t check it out because you don’t need it.)

The app is free. We will not have ads. We will have ways to pay us money — but first we’re working on making the app easier, better, and more fun to use.