Facebook is shutting down an anonymous app for teens it bought less than a year ago
- Facebook is closing down three apps it operated due to "low usage."
- One of them, tbh, was an app aimed at teens that it acquired just eight months ago.
- The company is also closing a fitness app, Moves, it acquired in 2014, and Hello, an app it launched in 2015.
A lot can change in less than a year.
In October 2017, Facebook announced it was acquiring "tbh," an anonymous app aimed at teens that had been riding high at the top of the App Store charts for weeks.
Now, a little over eight months later, Facebook is closing the app permanently due to "low usage."
The social network announced it was shutting down tbh on Monday, alongside two other apps - fitness app "Moves," which it acquired in 2014, and "Hello," an app it launched in 2015 "to combine information from Facebook with contact information on [your] phone."
"We regularly review our apps to assess which ones people value most. Sometimes this means closing an app and its accompanying APIs," the company said in a blog post about the closures.
"We know some people are still using these apps and will be disappointed - and we'd like to take this opportunity to thank them for their support. But we need to prioritize our work so we don't spread ourselves too thin. And it's only by trial and error that we'll create great social experiences for people."
Tbh, an acronym for "to be honest," was aimed at American high school and college students, and described itself as "the only anonymous app with positive vibes. It let users create quizzes their friends could vote on, and you can see how it worked in practice here.
"Tbh and Facebook share a common goal of building community and enabling people to share in ways that bring us closer together," a Facebook spokesperson said at the time of the acquisition. "With Facebook's resources tbh can continue to expand and build positive experiences."
It's not clear whether the apps' closures will lead to any layoffs, and a Facebook spokesperson did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
The closures come at a time when Facebook is clearing house. Reeling from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the company has restricted third-party developers' access to its platform, and also on Monday announced it was deprecating more APIs used by developers.
Facebook says it will delete all the data from the three apps within 90 days.