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Facebook quietly releases a Pinterest clone

Facebook quietly releases a Pinterest clone

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Hobbi is an app from Facebook’s new product experimentation team

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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A new app from Facebook’s new products division looks an awful lot like Pinterest, The Information reports. Hobbi is a photo-sharing app where you can “capture and organize your creative process” like cooking, baking, arts and crafts, fitness or home decor, according to its page in the App Store.

Aimed at hobbyists, the app organizes photos of projects into collections so users can track their progress over time, TechCrunch notes. It doesn’t have a social sharing component, but Hobbi can be used to create videos of projects after they’re finished.

App Store preview of Hobbi
App Store preview of Hobbi

Facebook introduced its New Product Experimentation team last summer to develop experimental apps outside of the company’s core brands. So far its products have included a meme-making app called Whale, social networking app Bump, and music DJ app Aux. None have achieved significant success.

Hobbi was released first in Colombia, Belgium, Spain, and Ukraine, according to The Information; we found it in the App Store on a US-based phone Thursday evening. It’s compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices running iOS 11.0 or later.

How or if Hobbi would fit into Facebook’s overall brand isn’t clear, but the company has said previously it would “expect many failures” from its NPE, and that apps could be shut down if they’re not useful.