Facebook and Dropbox, two of the most popular services on both mobile and desktop today, have taken down a handful of their apps from both the App Store and Play Store. The reason? Well, Facebook says that most of the features in the apps they took down have now been embedded directly into their two most popular apps, the official Facebook app and Messenger, their messaging application to communicate with Facebook friends using your personal profile or your phone number. And Dropbox? Well, they said that company had “increased our team’s focus on collaboration and simplifying the way people work together”, whatever that means.
The apps that Facebook took down today include Slingshot, the aforementioned Snapchat competitor; Riff, a collaborative video creation app; and Rooms, a group-messaging service launched last year. To be honest, though, I think Facebook is just saying that the features found in these apps are in the Facebook and Messenger apps so no one is convinced that they just shifted their focus over to their most profitable assets. But let’s not go down that rabbit hole…
And Dropbox’s discontinued apps are Mailbox, a popular email client users have loved for a number of years, and Carousel, a photo/video gallery app that lets users easily share media via Dropbox (obviously), email addresses, and others. Here’s a little more info about the shutdown by the popular cloud storage service:
The Mailbox team released a separate blog post in which the developers conceded that “there’s only so much an email app can do to fundamentally fix email,” and noted that many of the new advancements in email management Mailbox had made were now available in other apps.
On a FAQ page, the Mailbox crew confirmed that the shutdown will take place on February 26 next year. Prior to that shutdown, users will be given an option to export their auto-swipe patterns to help recreate them elsewhere. Snoozed emails will be available in the “later” list.
On the 26th, all drafts, auto-swipe settings, and snoozes will be deleted. Messages falling into those categories should remain on users’ Gmail and iCloud accounts without any problem.
All user data will be deleted from Dropbox’s servers within the next 30 days. Users who earned 1 GB of free Dropbox space by signing up for Mailbox will not lose that extra storage. Mailbox has also confirmed it has no plans to open-source the app.
Are you shocked by the sudden moves made by Facebook and Dropbox? Let us know with a comment below!
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