Facebook Bids Farewell To Creative Labs

Facebook has decided to put an end to Creative Labs, which was responsible for the development of experimental social applications.

Facebook came up with Creative Labs two years ago, that turned out to be an important component of the company. The venture started as a startup from the company’s own establishment where it built a bunch of experimental social applications that are designed in a manner to test out new interaction patterns and interfaces. However, now there will not be any more experiments where the company has finally decided to turn off Creative Labs.

Facebook has clarified now that the segment has not been closed but the applications by the division are going to be discontinued. According to the company’s spokeswoman, it was acknowledged by The Verge, "Since their launches, we've incorporated elements of Slingshot, Riff and Rooms into the Facebook for iOS and Android apps.” She further added, "We haven't updated these apps in some time and we've decided to officially end support by removing them from the App Store and Google Play."

The segment was at its bests, where the company came up with an alternative of the News Feed in the form of Paper, through this endeavor, the segment pushed forward the barriers that were observed in terms of Facebook’s design. Ironically, what many observed was that the features had a lot of similarity with other apps like Snapchat.

Likewise, Slingshot was an initiative to copy the success story of Snapchat that offered missives. Moreover, Riff was actually a take on the Stories feature by Snapchat. A year ago, the company came up with Rooms that also had an interesting layout, which was a way to reimagine the web forums on portable devices.

However, in order to join the platform, you were required to go through a vigorous process of taking the screenshots of the QR codes. This was the thing that contributed to its downfall resulting in little or no traction. The creator of Creative Labs, Mr. Josh Miller left the company to render his services to White House, serving as a director of product back in September.

The social media giant claimed that none of its employees was laid off during the shutdown of the segment. However, this is not great news for Paper, the application is still present on the app store. The app has not been updated since the past six to seven months and as per the recent news, there will not be any updates at all. However, Facebook has now vouched to allow developers make small teams and develop apps.