Facebook discontinues Poke (Snapchat clone) and Camera (Instagram clone)

A spokeswoman from Facebook has confirmed that the two Facebook apps, Poke and Camera, are no longer available in the App Store (and left no more comments).

Facebook has confirmed this on Friday. Poke was essentially launched as a rival to Snapchat and in fact it performed quite well during the earlier days when Snapchat was buggy.

Snapchat is based on ephemeral and private messaging - privacy a big plus factor here. Facebook’s poke did well in the earlier days and was also somewhat considered a rival/competitor to Snapchat. But later on, Snapchat took the game and Poke became less interesting to people.

Also the ephemeral and private messaging features are a great plus to Snapchat while Facebook has record of all the logs. Plus there’s tagging and all sorts of openness when it comes to Poke.

Most people seemed to prefer and like the fact that their chat messages/photos etc. will self destruct in a specific amount of time, with Snapchat. That called in for privacy which Facebook’s Poke missed terribly.

Moreover it seems that Poke was not really a big project of Facebook and it was left floating on the app store for about 2 years now!

Nevertheless Poke did not do bad so far. Since the company didn’t say anything as to why they discontinued Poke, we cannot talk more about it.

Another app that’s discontinued is Camera. Facebook introduced Camera in order to be able to upload multiple image and share them on Facebook. With Camera, you could also add filters to the photos you take and then share them with your friends on Facebook (somewhat like Instagram).

So what’s next? We don’t know! Facebook might have other new apps/replacements in the timeline. Or may be not.