Meta’s NPE Crew Continues to Shift Focus with the Shutdown of One other Experimental App

Meta is continuing to rebuild its New Product Experimentation (NPE) team, which has previously worked on various experimental apps, with the closure of another NPE project.

Dating app ‘Ignited‘, the allows users to video chat with potential matches for 4 minutes to better decide their suitability before proceeding, is the newest NPE app out there cut from the rotation, as Meta is looking for new ways to develop its tools.

Obviously, Sparked never really caught on, and Meta is now reducing its losses and removing support for the project, incorporating whatever insights one would assume into its broader Facebook dating project.

Sparked users have been informed that the app will be permanently closed on January 20th and that users will be able to download their information from the app until then.

As mentioned earlier, Meta has been working to realign the focus of its NPE team, which has released a number of apps over the past two years to catch the latest user trends and stay one step ahead of the next big thing.

Apparently, none of these experiments worked as the NPE team’s full list of apps reflected the ups and downs of online fads throughout the period.

• great, a cameo-like platform for connecting with celebrities that is apparently no longer available
• Hotline, a clubhouse-style social audio app launched in beta last April but has since been removed
• forecast, which aimed at crowd sourcing prediction, was featured in June 2020, then shut down in October last year
• Venue, a live sports engagement app was launched May 2020, and closed sometime last year
• Catching upto facilitate Phone calls between friends who are ready to talk, brought to life May 2020 and has now disappeared from the App Store
• cooperation, for music collaborations via short video clips brought to life May 2020 and will be closed this march.
• Kit, which provided advanced messaging options through the Apple Watch, has now disappeared from the App Store
• Hobbieswhich provided a way to collect pictures of creative hobbies and sort them into boards only six months
• whale, a meme creation tool that quietly launched in November 2019, lasted until recently, based on reported updates.
• TO, a participatory DJ app didn’t make it either
• Bump, a chat app, could not hold its own either

In fact, of the thirteen experimental apps that the NPE team has launched since November 2019, only two are still active – the rap creation app.bars‘is still in the App Store, along with’Voted‘, a messaging app for couples. The track record here likely suggests they won’t be in this world long either.

Meta announced last month that iThe NPE team would shift its focus to Building with and for communities that “have historically been overlooked, underestimated and undervalued by our industry”. The idea is that while the latest broad-based trends can lead to greater app adoption, there are many areas where new use cases and functionality are emerging that may not be as broad but could lead to significant new changes .

As per SURNAME:

“We are expanding from our current presence in the US to build with and for communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America and to scale what works there around the world. Right now, the increase in global connectivity and the decreasing cost of experimentation have created new opportunities. In this next era, anyone with a design mindset, wherever they are, can quickly see that quick experimentation overrides the wisdom they have received and adapt. We need to be more conscious when building vicinity what the world looks like today and what it will look like tomorrow. In this way, over time, we will learn to identify universal experiences. “

Some of this will obviously result in the group clearing the board in order to focus on these new projects again. What exactly that will look like, and whether these new experiments will be more successful or valuable in the longer term, remains to be seen, but it is interesting to see how Meta has made these earlier experiments, which once appeared to have taken place, promising enough for exploration.

Does this mean an end to Meta’s trending hunt and efforts to stave off potential competition in the space? Perhaps Meta is now moving away from mimicking and moving towards the future instead, with projects more focused on the next level of connection – i.e., the Metaverse.

The new focus, which also includes new offices for the team in Lagos and Asia, could be a big change and it will be interesting to see how these new collaborations and partnerships develop over time.

But if you want to test your rap skills I would be downloading ‘Bars’ pretty soon.