Facebook Shuts Down TikTok and Pinterest Clones Amid Ongoing Rivalry
Facebook is closing Lasso and Hobbi, two apps that heavily copy TikTok and Pinterest. Despite these failures, the social media giant continues to borrow features from competitors to boost its ad revenue.
Facebook shuts down Lasso and Hobbi this month, marking the end of two apps that heavily copy TikTok and Pinterest. Lasso allows users to create and share short videos like TikTok, while Hobbi serves as a digital scrapbook for hobbies similar to Pinterest. Both apps come from Facebook's New Products Experimentation team, but they fail to gain meaningful traction against their established rivals.
This shutdown does not significantly impact Facebook's finances, but it shows a familiar pattern in the company's strategy. Facebook repeatedly tries to replicate successful features from smaller competitors, just as it previously does with Snapchat through failed attempts like Poke and Slingshot. Eventually, these trials lead to massive successes like Instagram Stories, which generates billions in ad sales after Facebook perfects the format.
Failure is simply part of the development process for the social media giant. By testing what does not work, Facebook gets closer to finding features that do, allowing it to quickly scale successful ideas to its massive user base. Rivals like TikTok and Pinterest cannot relax, as Facebook undoubtedly continues to co-opt their best innovations to drive future ad revenue.