The first pornography app for Google Glass has launched, though not for long.
This morning Mikandi, a developer of adult content apps, released “T*** & Glass,” an app for the connected glasses, which allows users to browse and vote on racy content. The app also takes advantage of the fact that Glass places both a screen and camera right above the eye. Glass users can record their own pornographic content or photos, and upload them to the app.
“We always try to be up to date on the latest technology. We are a mobile-first company,” Jesse Adams, the CEO and co-founder of Mikandi, told ABC News in an interview. “You are literally recording what you see and sharing it. If someone else can see a little taste of what you saw in front of their eyes, that kind of interaction is really fun. It’s that live personalized experience that you can then see on your eyes that’s really interesting.”
Starting this morning Glass owners were able to visit the app’s website, view some of the pornographic images within the app and also install it to their glasses. According to the company, over 10,000 people visited the site, though only 17 Glass owners actually installed it. Google has only just begun to distribute a couple thousand of the $1,500 glasses to early adopters through its Explorer program.
But Google doesn’t wish to have people exploring porn through the glasses. The company has clamped down on its policies surrounding pornographic content. “We don’t allow Glassware content that contains nudity, graphic sex acts or sexually explicit material,” Google’s Glass Platform Developer Policies now reads.
A Google spokesperson added that “Any Glassware that violates this policy will be blocked from appearing on Glass.”
According to Mikandai, the clause was added to Google’s policies over the weekend. When asked by ABC News if Google had added this clause over the weekend, Google said it was updated last week. The Platform Developer Policies states that it was updated on Saturday, June 1, 2013.
“When we first picked up our device, we were very careful to comb through all of Google’s terms, policies and developers’ agreement to make sure we were playing within their rules. That was important to us to play in Google’s boundaries,” Jennifer McEwen, co-founder of Mikandai, told ABC News. “Even last week as we were gearing up to make the announcement, we took a look the agreement and there was no mention again of a ban on adult content.”
Adams and McEwen explained that they were surprised given the openness of Google’s Android. While Google’s official Play Store prohibits pornography, Mikandai offers a third-party app store for Android that allows users to download adult content-based apps on their phones or tablets.
Because there is no Glass app store yet, Google hasn’t been able to completely ban the app, but Mikandai hopes Google will eventually make Glass an open platform. For now though, the company plans to adjust the app to comply with Google’s rules.
“We are going to have to be really creative. There are tasteful and artful things we can do,” Adams said. “We still really want to play around the idea of having Glass users share the content, but we need to figure out ways for users to share photos, whether they are just sexy or clothed.”
