Facebook released Poke at the end of 2012, as a response to the rising popularity of Snapchat. However, the app failed to catch on with users, or halt the rise of its competitor. Facebook has removed the app from app stores, along with its photo uploading app, Camera.
Since Camera and Poke, Facebook has taken a different path with standalone apps. The company now has a Creative Labs department to create and test new apps, the first of them being Paper. We also know that the company has a policy on launching beta apps – if beta tests are popular with users, they will try to push them to 100 million users, and only at that point try to monetize them.
Poke’s demise is obviously fueled by its failure to become popular, but it’s a different story with Camera. That app was released when Facebook’s mobile app had a limited photo-upload capacity. Camera’s innovations and improvements have been integrated into the standard Facebook app.
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