Facebook Lifestage Shut Down, the Company's Snapchat Clone Targeted at Teens

Facebook has shut down its standalone social networking app Lifestage that it released a year ago for high schoolers, a media report revealed.

Not many people know about this Snapchat-like app as only users aged 21 or younger could sign up for it. Lifestage, launched in August last year, was intended to help teens find and connect with other classmates who went to their school. But it never seemed to become popular in any sense and had huge privacy issues as well. The app was launched for Android in October of the same year.

"There was no way to actually enforce the 21-and-under rule and all Lifestage content was always public and viewable by everyone, inside and outside your school," a Business Insider report noted.

Users were supposed to use the app to share selfies and videos that all of their classmates could watch instead of sending direct private messages.

The Snapchat-like app was removed from the App Store on August 4 and it had not been updated for months. It never figured on the App Store's top charts during its short lifespan.

"We originally launched Lifestage to make it easier for teens in the US to connect with others at their school by creating a video profile with content for all of things that make up their identity," the report quoted a Facebook spokesperson as saying.

"Teens continue to make up an important part of the global community on Facebook, and we've learned a lot from Lifestage. We will continue to incorporate these learnings into features in the main Facebook app," the spokesperson added.

The app was created by 20-year-old Facebook employee Michael Sayman to help teens find and connect with other classmates who went to their school.

Written with inputs from IANS