Facebook closes down Creative Labs; removes Slingshot, Riff, and Rooms from the App Store

Today is not a good day for some apps, as earlier Dropbox announced the End Times for its own Carousel and Mailbox. Now Facebook is working on its own closures.
As reported by CNET recently, Facebook has decided to close down Creative Labs, the source of many different Facebook apps over the years. That includes a Snapchat competitor called Slingshot, which launched in June of 2014; Riff, the app that let friends create videos together which launched in June of this year; and, Rooms, an app meant to build forums for people to talk about whatever they wanted, which launched in October of 2014.

These apps have ceased development, and, moreover, are no longer available within the iOS App Store. Creative Labs will also be shutting down. The features that were baked into the aforementioned apps will now be integrated into other Facebook services, including the main app proper, and the Messenger app.
Facebook is just as willing to launch apps as it is to close those that aren’t living up to expectations, so the closure of these apps may not be all that surprising. It will be interesting to see how the features in the closed services resurfaced in the already existing apps from Facebook.
Did you use any of these?
[via CNET]

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