Facebook kills off its failed Creative Labs brand
Facebook’s Creative Labs initiative, which develops new apps for the company, has been killed off after a succession of unsuccessful apps over the last two years.
The Creative Labs website has been removed and a few of the apps created under the project have been pulled from the app stores. Would-be Snapchat rival Slingshot has been removed as well as Rooms, a discussion space app allowing users to use pseudonyms, and video creation app Riff.
A Facebook spokeswoman told CNET that the Creative Labs branding has been retired but maintained this did not mean the social network giant was done building standalone apps.
This explains why Facebook's most recent creation Notify, a Twitter-like product which sends mobile notifications from specified publishers to the lock screen, did not fall under the cut like some of the other apps.
In the two years since launch Creative Labs produced nearly 10 apps, none of which have taken off. Facebook is hoping that its Notify app and its photo sharing app, Moments, can be a success and the ditching the tainted Creative Labs label will give them a clean slate to move forward with.