Facebook Shuts Down Lifestage, Its Snapchat-Like App For High Schoolers

Facebook has shutdown Lifestage, its standalone app that featured Snapchat-like features high schoolers. Lifestage was pulled from the App Store on Aug. 4, Facebook confirmed to Business Insider today.

“We originally launched Lifestage to make it easier for teens in the US to connect with others at their school by creating a video profile with content for all of things that make up their identity,” a Facebook spokesperson said. “Teens continue to make up an important part of the global community on Facebook, and we've learned a lot from Lifestage. We will continue to incorporate these learnings into features in the main Facebook app.”

Facebook’s Lifestage app was quietly released almost a year ago and was designed to be used by high schoolers, specifically, users who were 21 years old or younger. At the time, the app was being rolled out on a school-by-school basis.

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Users didn’t even need a Facebook account to start using Lifestage. The app will simply ask users what school they’re attending, and it will bring up video profiles of people attending the same school or from schools that are nearby.

Since the app was being rolled out on school-by-school basis, all schools were locked out of the app by default. A school can only be unlocked once 20 students have signed up to start using the app.

The Lifestage app hasn’t been updated in months (last app update was back in October 2016), and it never reached the Apple App Store’s top charts during its short lifespan. Lifestage also didn’t get an Android version released, as pointed out by The Verge.

Lifestage was created by Michael Sayman, who joined Facebook shortly after leaving high school. He says that he wanted to create an app that his demographic would relate to, and have young people easily connect with one another.

“Lifestage allows people to build a profile made up entirely of ‘video fields’. It allows them show others who they are and to find out more about the people in their school community as well as meet new people,” Sayman said at the time.

The app itself functioned very similarly to Snapchat. Users were able to record and share short videos and add stickers and filters onto them. Content on the app was always public and viewable by everyone, including those outside of school.

The problem with Lifestage was that Facebook appears to no longer need a new standalone app to counter Snapchat, as pointed out by TechCrunch. Facebook has been copying Snapchat’s key features for its main app, Messenger and Instagram. Lifestage appears to be redundant at this point.

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Instagram Stories already hit 200 million users back in April, and currently has 250 million daily users as of this month. For comparison, Snapchat has 166 million daily users.

In other related news, Facebook has also shutdown its standalone Groups app for iOS and Android devices. However, the company did say that it's planning to incorporate some of its features for the main Facebook app.

“The Groups team has been working on additional tools to improve the overall groups experience and we've found that we can do more with and for the community by investing in the main Facebook app,” the company said.