Facebook halts plans for teen meme hub called LOL

Facebook, that has been building and testing a hub for buffoonish acculturation content, called LOL, is switch gears.

The world's largest social network confirmed on Th that it had been not attending to unleash a acculturation app aimed toward highschool youngsters.

Instead it's focusing additional on a electronic messaging app for teenagers beneath thirteen years previous, referred to as traveller youngsters.

The company is restructuring a "youth team" of quite one hundred staff World Health Organization work on product and options for kids and youths, rearrange rumored earlier.

"The youth team has restructured so as to match prime business priorities, as well as increasing our investment in traveller youngsters," a Facebook spokesperson aforementioned in a very statement.

Messenger youngsters was free in Dec 2017 and provides kids the simplest way to speak with parent-approved friends and relations through the advertisement-free app. kid advocates have raised issues that the app might contribute to depression, unhealthy sleep habits and lower vanity. The groups, that embrace the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, have urged Facebook multiple times to shut traveller youngsters down. the corporate says the app is safe.

Facebook, like alternative technical school giants, has been attempting to draw in younger folks to its platform and vie with apps like Snapchat. Teens not solely pay a great deal of your time on social media, they are additionally a vital future audience for these corporations to capture.

Facebook has experimented with alternative ways that to draw in younger users. Last year, it launched a short-form video app referred to as Lasso, however the app hasn't gained a lot of of a following. Facebook has additionally been ramping up efforts around a Snapchat-like feature referred to as Stories, that lets users post videos and photos that vanish inside twenty four hours.