Lifestage, one of Facebook’s more recent attempts to get Snapchat-obsessed teens to use Facebook’s services instead, has now been shut down, as reported by Business Insider. If you’re not familiar with Lifestage, I don’t entirely blame you, given that the app’s big hook was that only users aged 21 or younger could sign on in the first place.
Facebook has “learned a lot from Lifestage”
Also, the video diary-ish application just never seemed to actually become popular in any sense of the word. Lifestage had big privacy issues as well. There was no way to actually enforce the 21 and under rule — anyone could enter in whatever birthday they wanted when signing up — and all Lifestage content was “always public and viewable by everyone, inside and outside your school.”
Lifestage was actually pulled from the App Store (an Android version was never released) on August 4th, several days before it appears anyone actually noticed it was gone, which should give a rough indication of the state of things. Additionally, Lifestage was last updated in October 2016, so clearly the writing has been on the wall for this experiment for a while.
All is not lost for Lifestage, though. In a statement to Business Insider, a Facebook spokesperson commented that the company has “learned a lot from Lifestage” and will “continue to incorporate these learnings into features in the main Facebook app.”