Facebook has quietly killed off two of its lesser-known iOS mobile applications, Poke and Camera.
The company has not released any official comment save confirming that the apps are no more, but both have been pulled from Apple’s App Store, and all traces of them have been removed from the Facebook website itself.
Both Poke and Camera were Facebook attempts to compete with popular existing apps, (Snapchat and Instagram respectively) but gained little attention.
Poke was launched by Facebook at the end of 2011 as the company attempted to piggyback on the success of Snapchat, which let users share images before being deleted after a certain time period.
Described by Facebook as "a simple and fun way to say hello to your friends", Poke never gained the same kind of popularity as Snapchat. Facebook never released any official download or user figures.
Poke was perhaps best known for being the source of a 2012 privacy spat featuring Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg’s younger sister Randi, a former Facebook executive, who became upset after a Zuckerberg family photo featuring their ‘reactions’ to the app went viral after she uploaded it.
Facebook Camera, awkwardly launched shortly after the company’s $1bn acquisition of Instagram in April 2012, appeared to be heavily influenced by the photo sharing and editing service, providing users with a single location to view images taken by their friends.
Users could also use Facebook Camera to add filters to their images before uploading to their profile.
The announcement is the latest in a series of mobile news stories from Facebook, which recently announced it is to launch a mobile-ad network later this year as it looks to leverage more data from its users.
