Facebook ceases its Creative Labs Divison

Creative Labs was built two years back as a startup within the company and it developed a series of experimental social apps designed to test new interfaces and interaction patterns. But, Facebook today announced that the experiments have come to an end and the division has been shut.

"Since their launches, we've incorporated elements of Slingshot, Riff and Rooms into the Facebook for iOS and Android apps," a Facebook spokeswoman told The Verge. "We haven't updated these apps in some time and we've decided to officially end support by removing them from the App Store and Google Play."

Creative Labs pushed the limitations of Facebook’s design ahead. Often, the apps imitated featured from other companies like Snapchat. Slingshot was a transparent clone of Snapchat, Riffs was an endeavor to replicate the popular stories feature of Snapchat. Paper, a magazine-like, ad-free way to use Facebook on the Apple iPhone is the most known Creative Labs project has not been updated since March.

Other available Creative Labs apps on App Store and Google Play Store include the photo management app Moments, Facebook Groups, and the more recent Facebook Notify news app

Facebook confirmed that no one was unwaged post the division’s shutdown. The company still plans to keep investing in many of its straight apps including Groups, Moments, Mentions, and Paper.