Facebook’s recent Creative Labs initiative has been quietly shutdown. The startup initiative was essentially aimed at developing new and innovative apps, which included apps such as would-be Snapchat rival Slingshot, the Rooms group messaging service along with an app that allows users to share short video clips called Riff. All these apps have now been taken down from the app stores, while the company has also taken down the official website for Creative Labs.
A Facebook spokeswoman has already confirmed to CNET that these apps have been pulled from app stores, further adding they hadn’t been updated for quite some time.
“Since their launches, we’ve incorporated elements of Slingshot, Riff and Rooms into the Facebook for iOS and Android apps,” she said.
The Creative Labs initiative was apparently Facebook’s attempt to experiment with its non-core products.
It lasted for two years which was inspired by the networking giant’s famous binge coding sessions where developers got together to create some sort of a prototype for the company score products.
Since the start of Creative Labs initiative, Facebook seemed rather apprehensive about it as the company did not bother heavily promoting it. It was a mere experiment which the company has decided to shut down, as the concept failed to catch on among its community which has a user base of more than a billion users.
Facebook has been constantly testing and adding new features on its main social networking platform, for instance, the company recently added live streaming and 360-degree videos. While recently, the networking giant announced that soon users will be allowed to do Live Streaming on the network. The company has already started testing the feature for a few select users on iOS in the US, which will be rolled out to all users in the near future. Live Streaming feature will essentially allow users to send notifications about their broadcasts among close friends.
