Facebook’s Lesser-known “Lifestage” App Reportedly Shut Down

For some, the name Lifestage might be alien. However, for a section of teenagers who used it to communicate with their schoolmates, the app held great significance. But it seems that Lifestage, a clone of Snapchat, will be missed as Facebook has reportedly shut it down entirely, erasing it from both Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store.

Launched only a year ago, the app has been pulled by Facebook probably due to its underwhelming global presence. Lifestage had a rather unique user demographic: it was used predominantly by high school students who were 21 or younger. The age restriction was put in place to maintain the exclusivity of the platform for teenagers.

The app was ideated by a 20-year-old Facebook employee, Michael Sayman. The goal was to help teens connect with classmates at their school. It offered teenagers the opportunity to share selfies, upload videos and engage with their peers. Despite being created for the express purpose of boosting interaction amongst teenagers, the app failed to achieve global popularity. In fact, it had very few users who were aware of its existence. Additionally, privacy concerns were raised concerning the app.

Reports suggest that the app hadn’t been updated for months prior to being shut down. Also, it never made it to the list of widely searched apps during its lifespan. The distinctive rule that permitted only teenagers under the age of 21 years to use the app meant that the content generated on Lifestage was public, both within and outside the user’s school.

A Facebook spokesperson has revealed in an interview, “We originally launched Lifestage to make it easier for teens to connect with others at their school by creating a video profile with content that represented their identity.” It was expected that the app would promote a more interactive, visually-engaging culture of shared videos among users, instead of them just consuming content via their direct messages. It allowed teens to view each other’s videos, comment on them, and also see how many views their own posted videos had racked up.

Although Facebook’s ambitious venture to tailor an app specifically for the teenage demographic may have been cut short, the lessons learned from the Lifestage experiment could well inform the corporation’s future endeavors in expanding its user base. Moreover, it is a testament to the high-paced, survival-of-the-fittest nature of mobile application development, wherein only the apps that truly capture public imagination and meet user needs, succeed.