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 Google Play Store and shutting down the division that created them. Slingshot, was Facebook’s main attempt at a Snapchat clone, though with a slightly different take; Rooms was a more modern take on Chat rooms and Riff was an interesting video chain app, which encouraged users to group like videos together in a chain. The fate of the rest of these apps is unclear.
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Facebook has given up the ghost on Slingshot, the ephemeral mobile messaging app it built to compete with fast growing Snapchat, according to a statement released by the social media giant. When it launched, it was an app that let you send images to people, but in order for the recipient to receive it, they first had to sending something in return. It’s a lot like the “starred friends” function on the site. Clearly it still wasn’t enough to get many on board.
A Facebook spokeswoman confirmed with CNET that the apps have been officially discontinued while noting the company has “incorporated elements of Slingshot, Riff and Rooms into the Facebook for iOS and Android apps”.
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The Menlo Park tech firm, as CNET reported earlier Monday, shut down the Web page for Creative Labs and removed unpopular apps Slingshot, Riff and Rooms from online stores. They just won’t be part of Creative Labs.
