Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at an event at Facebook’s Headquarters office in Menlo Park, California on January 15, 2012.Josh Edelson | AFP | Getty ImagesFacebook confirmed that it’s shutting down two of its little-known social media apps shortly after their launch.TikTok rival Lasso and Pinterest rival Hobbi will both be terminated on July 10. Lasso, the more popular of the two, allowed people to record videos up to 15 seconds long and overlay music on top. It was launched a year-and-a-half ago. “We place multiple bets across our family of apps to test and learn how people want to express themselves,” a Facebook spokesperson told CNBC via email. “One of these tests was Lasso, our stand-alone short-form video app, which we have decided to shut down and remove from all app stores on July 10. We thank everyone who shared their creativity and feedback with us, which we’ll look to incorporate in our other video experiences.”Lasso was launched in a small handful of countries including Colombia, Mexico, the U.S., Argentina, Chile, Peru, Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Ecuador, and Uruguay, app tracking firm Sensor Tower told CNBC. “To date, we estimate Lasso has generated more than 10 million downloads from the App Store and Google Play,” said Craig Chapple, a mobile insights strategist at Sensor Tower. Lasso issued a push alert to users on Wednesday telling them that it will be shutting down. In order to try to compete with ByteDance’s TikTok, which has been downloaded over 2 billion times, Facebook-owned Instagram has developed its own video-music mix feature called “Reels.”Reels was launched in Brazil last November and Instagram expanded it to France and Germany at the end of last month. Pinterest-rival Hobbi, which only went live on the Apple App Store in the U.S. in February, also issued a push alert to users on Wednesday letting them know that it was closing down. The app, designed by Facebook’s New Product Experimentation team, allows people to document, share and organize their hobbies. It has received just 7,000 downloads, according to Sensor Tower.
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