Facebook has moved to shut down its social networking app exclusive to teen users called Lifestage, nearly a year after launching the tool, according to a new report. Lifestage is one of the social media giant’s apps designed to clone Snapchat that worked to allow high school-aged users to take selfies and videos they can share with other teens from their school. Facebook has reportedly confirmed that the app has now been withdrawn from all platforms including Android, likely because it had never gained much traction among its intended audience since its debut last year. Moreover, it had been a while since Lifestage received its last update, suggesting that Facebook has long been considering to kill the app, seeing how it never really managed to take off.
Launched in October of last year, Lifestage was developed by Facebook software engineer Michael Sayman in an attempt to capture a major portion of the market dominated by Snapchat, consisting mainly of teens. The app’s discovery tool allowed users to get connected with other users who were studying in their school. Users could then share selfie photos and videos with their community of classmates or schoolmates, though the app did not include a direct messaging tool that could have further deepened connections among teen users on the platform. The app was exclusively aimed at teenagers, so much so that individuals aged over 21 upon signing up were not allowed to use Lifestage, though the service was susceptible to deceptive tricks of entering a fake age to be able to search for other accounts and more.
Unlike other social networking apps, however, Lifestage did not have an option for users to control who can view the things they share on the platform, meaning that their photos and videos were visible to the public by default. Facebook said that while its teen-focused app has now ceased operations, teens remain a significant component of the Menlo Park, California-based company’s global community, suggesting that the social media giant is expected to launch more apps in the future dedicated to this young demographic. In fact, Facebook was previously rumored to be working on a new tool called Talk that is also focused on teens. More updates related to that endeavor should follow shortly.