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Facebook removes Slingshot, Rooms, and Riff apps from App Store, closes Creative Labs

Shortly after Dropbox announced it had shut down its popular Mailbox and Carousel apps, Facebook has made a similar move by removing a handful of its apps from the iOS App Store and shutting down the division that created them.

Facebook’s Creative Labs project was intended to promote the creation of apps like Snapchat competitor Slingshot, and has launched several apps with some success. However, the social site has apparently decided that the time has come to shutter that initiative and the apps it has produced.

The affected apps include Slingshot, the aforementioned Snapchat competitor; Riff, a collaborative video creation app; and Rooms, a group-messaging service launched last year.

Facebook says most of the features from those apps have been integrated into other offerings such as the main Facebook app and Messenger.

The social networking site has previously shut down apps that weren’t performing as well as it had hoped, such as Facebook Camera, the photo sharing app that didn’t offer much over the stock camera app. The company had also previously experimented with a Snapchat competitor called Poke which allowed users to send temporary photos, videos, and text messages to friends.

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Comments

  1. standardpull - 8 years ago

    Failing to maintain products, then killing them, and then shutting down the whole program without any notion of refining the theme isn’t creative at all, and it isn’t in the spirit of laboratory discovery.

    Facebook’s creativity has fallen through the floor over the past few years. The facebook bean counters can’t figure out the value of experimental endeavors.

  2. Alan Aurmont - 8 years ago

    Snapchat’s value’s just shot through the roof.

    Just goes to show that money can’t by creativity. Chew on that, Facebook.

  3. Probably could not find enough cheep foreign labor to replace the workers that got them started

  4. Doug Aalseth - 8 years ago

    Only three weeks till Christmas.