Facebook kills LOL meme app before it launches

The meme app's 'small scale test' isn't going to continue, and Facebook hopes to find salvation in Messenger Kids.

February 8, 2019, 7:42 AM PDT

Less than a month after announcing the LOL meme hub, a humorous app aimed at high school kids, Facebook is giving the new feature the ax.

Instead, the social media site is restructuring its "youth team," the organization that builds products and features for young people, according to a report from Recode.

Apparently, LOL didn't take off quite the way Facebook had hoped, so the company is changing gears to focus on Messenger Kids, the 2017 messaging app for children under 13 years old.

SEE: Facebook Messenger now lets you delete messages sent within the last 10 minutes

The company wants to scale down the youth team projects to focus on more potentially successful ones. According to Facebook, Messenger Kids is one project it will prioritize.

"The youth team has restructured in order to match top business priorities, including increasing our investment in Messenger Kids," a Facebook spokesperson told Recode.

Child advocates urged Facebook to shut down Messenger Kids last month after reports that the social network tricked kids into spending their parents' money on online games. Additionally, advocates were concerned that that app could lead to depression, unhealthy sleep habits and low self-esteem.

The social media site countered that the messaging app was designed with input from families as well as privacy and safety experts.

Facebook has been focusing on regaining its vanishing younger user base. The social media site's reputation was tarnished in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and it continues to fall from favor against rival sites like Instagram and Snapchat.

Previous additions like Facebook Dating, Lasso and adding songs to profiles also failed to sway younger users.

The social media site has even gone so far as to pay young users to download a "research" app so Facebook could gain intimate access to their phone and web activity.

FOLLOW Download.com on Twitter for all the latest app news.

Takeaways

Less than a month after announcing the LOL meme hub app, Facebook is canceling the project to focus on Messenger Kids.
The social media site said that it wants to focus on more profitable projects, despite the fact that Messenger Kids came under fire from child advocate groups last month.

Shelby is an Associate Writer for CNET's Download.com. She served as Editor in Chief for the Louisville Cardinal newspaper at the University of Louisville. She interned as Creative Non-Fiction Editor for Miracle Monocle literary magazine. Her work appears in Glass Mountain Magazine, Bookends Review, Soundings East, and on Louisville.com. Her cat, Puck, is the best cat ever.