Facebook has removed its Poke and Camera apps from circulation, according to a report late Friday from The Verge. Both apps were pale imitations of a competing app and an acquired app, respectively, and their elimination is another sign that Facebook is reining in its strategy of trying to be all things to all people.
Poke was originally released in December 2012 with similar functionality to Snapchat, offering users the ability to send each other self-destructing messages and photos. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg tried to play the app off as a joke a year later, and now the app has been killed.
Camera represented Facebook's salvo at Instagram, fired just after it acquired Instagram for $1 billion in April 2012. Camera was released in May 2012 as an alternative way to browse friends' photos or upload one's own photos with filters, a close imitation of Instagram's format.
According to an interview with the New York Times, the removal of the apps are consistent with Facebook's new strategy of owning and managing different tech properties like Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus while allowing them to operate with some agency and without being absorbed into a singular megaplatform.
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