Through the looking GLASS - Om Malik interview with the developers of GLASS, a subscription photo sharing app

The app looks cool. I want to be in on it but I'm honestly really skeptical that it will work as a subscription model. I'd probably be willing to buy in myself, how many of my friends would be? Would this be interesting for anyone but professional photographers? I get that engagement isn't a goal, but you do need some amount of engagement for people to feel like it's worth it to spend their time there.

It would be nice if there was a "free tier" that let you view, follow, and maybe post ephemeral content that's only up for a day or two but not be able to have a library. Like, 98% of Reddit accounts don't ever post or comment. Even if half of those are bots, that's a big user population that would be in it the application yes? Premium features would be for people who like to make posts and custom home pages, displaying your pics in higher resolution, and other things prosumers and professionals would value.

I think what makes me saddest about it is how they point out that we've lost most of the "good internet" of my youth and they're trying to recover that. But could me in my teens or 20s have been able to afford a subscription fee for social media? Could I have discovered or deepened my hobbies or interests if all forums were behind paywalls? We can rebuild the good internet, but if it's only going to be an internet for older professionals with disposable income it'll never have that same vibe we all miss.

The only "social network" I can think of that actually succeeded with a subscription model was the SomethingAwful forums, and that's because the site had a pretty unique community.

It's also extremely cheap. A one-time $10 fee isn't really noticeable, but $50 is. And the fee is as much a way to curate the community and make moderator actions, like bans, actually have teeth as much as anything else.

In Glass' case I think they're trying to bootstrap a sort of "cool kid's club" and make it a popular place to be for pro and aspiring photographers. So it would be as much a professional association/organization as it is a social network. In theory people would value the contacts and opportunities for improvement by engaging with that community. But no gaming for engagement AND a small audience due to needing a subscription both combine to make it a hard sell, I think. People need other people to interact with for a social network to work. Even Something Awful didn't start with a subscription, the community came first.