Facebook removes Slingshot, Rooms, and Riff apps from Play Store, closes Creative Labs

via <a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/1617252-Facebook-Android-L-Experiment" target="_blank">Dribbble</a>

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.

Facebook’s Creative Labs project was intended to promote the creation of apps like Snapchat competitor Slingshot, and has launched several apps with some success. However, the social site has apparently decided that the time has come to shutter that initiative and the apps it has produced.

The affected apps include Slingshot, the aforementioned Snapchat competitor; Riff, a collaborative video creation app; and Rooms, a group-messaging service launched last year.

Facebook says most of the features from those apps have been integrated into other offerings such as the main Facebook app and Messenger.

The social networking site has previously shut down apps that weren’t performing as well as it had hoped, such as Facebook Camera, the photo sharing app that didn’t offer much over the stock camera app. The company had also previously experimented with a Snapchat competitor called Poke which allowed users to send temporary photos, videos, and text messages to friends.