Facebook has announced that it will shut down Lasso on July 10, 2020. Built as a TikTok clone, the app was only ever available in select markets worldwide.
Another one of Facebook’s experimental apps bites the dust. This time, Lasso, the social media giant’s TikTok clone, which will be shut down this month. The news was first shared by CNN’s Kerry Flynn who spotted the notifications being sent to users, inviting them to go save the videos they have created.
https://twitter.com/kerrymflynn/status/1278453048390680578
Lasso was first launched in 2018 but was only ever available in select markets worldwide: the US, Colombia, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Ecuador, and Uruguay as of February.
Less than two years later, Facebook is shutting the app down. But that does not mean the social media giant has given up on competing with TikTok. On the contrary, internal sources indicate that Facebook is shutting down Lasso to shift focus and resources to Instagram’s Reels feature.
Related | Reels: Instagram Brings Its TikTok Clone To More Countries
Reels is a video editing app that lets you record and edit short-format videos and share them in your Instagram Stories, send to your friends via DM, or post to a new section of Instagram’s Explore tab called “Top Reels.” After launching in Brazil in 2019, Instagram has just released an updated version in France and Germany .
July 10th will also see the end of Hobbi, another Facebook experimental app, that lets users document personal projects in a Pinterest-like design.
