Facebook killed its high school-only Snapchat clone and nobody noticed

Facebook has killed yet another one of its Snapchat clones.

The social network quietly yanked Lifestage, the bizarre Snapchat-like app that was only for high schoolers, from the App Store last week.

The app was launched less than a year ago but, like Facebook's many other attempts at replicating Snapchat, Lifestage never gained much traction with the teens it was hoping to lure away from Snapchat.

In fact, the app was so unpopular that it took several days before anyone even noticed it had been removed from the App Store and Google Play Store.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Facebook had tapped a 19-year-old staffer to create the app — likely in the hopes that a teenage product lead could be more successful at reaching high schoolers than previous efforts. But despite the "high schoolers only" gimmick, the app never saw much success. It had mostly one-star reviews at the time it was pulled and ranked #1,392 in the App Store's social media category at the time it was pulled, according to data from App Annie.

In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson said the company had "learned a lot from Lifestage."

"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. 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.”

Lifestage wasn't the only app Facebook has recently removed. The company also pulled its standalone Groups app, which it launched back in 2014. That may sound surprising, given how much Mark Zuckerberg and other execs have been hyping Facebook's community-driven groups feature in recent months, but in a statement the company said it was instead focusing on building out the groups feature in its main app and website.