Facebook has decided to pull the plug on Tik Tok rival, Lasso along with Pinterest rival Hobbi on July 10.
The short video app, Lasso alerted the users with this news on Wednesday. This app launched in 2018 was more popular of two apps, Facebook placed its bets on Lasso to compete with Tik Tok and Pinterest.
Pinterest rival Hobbi which went live on the Apple App Store in the U.S. in February, issued a push alert users on Wednesday letting them know of its closure.
Lasso, the Short-Video Sharing App
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Lasso allowed people to record videos up to 15 seconds and overlay music on top. Users could add fun filters and effects to these videos, follow creators, search hashtags, discover popular video viral trends, and participate in them. It also allowed users to add their videos directly to their Facebook stories.
It was launched only in a few countries which include Colombia, Mexico, the U.S., Argentina, Chile, Peru, Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Ecuador, and Uruguay. Earlier this year, the Hindi language was added as a support to this app, to grow user base in India as well.
A Facebook spokesperson told CNBC via email that Lasso was one of the multiple bets that Facebook placed across their family of apps to test how people express themselves and have decided to shut it down. The spokesperson said that Facebook thanks all its users for their creativity and feedback with an assurance to incorporate these experiences in their other apps.
A Troubled Journey for Lasso
This short video app had a troubled journey from the beginning. Brady Voss, who led the development of this app, left Facebook a few days after its launch. It also failed to gain traction and had fewer than 80,000 daily active users on Android, the highest ever recorded in Mexico as on June 1, as per mobile insights firm, App Annie. The app had even fewer users on Apple iOS.
The shut- down of Lasso is coming ahead of Tik Tok’s ban in India and the launch of “Instagram Reels” by Facebook-owned Instagram. To compete with Tik Tok, Instagram has developed its own video mix feature called “Reels”
Reels was launched in Brazil last November and expanded to France and Germany at the end of the last month.