We hope you weren’t using Meta’s experimental Tuned app to keep the flames of your love alive. Tuned, Meta’s social app for couples is closing down after a little over two years on the market. Users began experiencing difficulties last week and then received a message about the impending shutdown, recommending them to retrieve their data before September 19, when the programme will no longer function. According to a spokeswoman, Meta’s New Product Experimentation team shuts down apps that “aren’t staying.”
Tuned App was an experimental project of Meta’s New Product Experimentation (NPE) Team. The app was created to produce consumer-facing apps that would allow Meta to try out new features and measure people’s reactions.
Tuned was launched in the early months of the epidemic as a means for couples to keep in contact and involved, with chat capabilities and quizzes meant to allow them to express how they’re feeling, what they’re up to, and milestones they’re looking forward to.
However, it is unknown how many people utilised the programme. While Meta launched the previously iOS-only app to Android and claimed “many couples” used Tuned to become closer, there’s no question Tuned remained a niche product when compared to Facebook or Instagram. After all, you’re probably hearing about this app for the first time. We’d add that there wasn’t much sense when you could text, video chat, or utilise other current services to achieve many of the same objectives.
Tuned’s Spotify connection allows users to trade notes, photographs and videos, challenges, voice messages, notes and lists, and music. They might customise their moods and pick a password or a blur filter for more personal content. A “check-in” function encouraged couples to share their current sentiments about their relationship, with opportunities to provide context.
“With Tuned, you can digitally document and respond to artefacts of your relationship, creating a shared scrapbook for these important moments that you and your spouse can quickly scroll through and reminisce on,” Meta explained in an April 2020 blog post. “Send photo snapshots, notes, cards, voice memos, and more without broadcasting to the entire world or worrying about accidentally contacting the incorrect person.”
A “check-in” function encouraged couples to share their current sentiments about their relationship, with opportunities to provide context.
Tuned was only downloaded roughly 909,000 times across the Apple App Store and Google Play, according to Craig Chapple, a mobile insights specialist at app analytics firm Sensor Tower.
Tuned was notable for its lack of integration with Meta products like as Instagram, Facebook, and Facebook Dating – and this may have been its undoing. Tuned was only downloaded roughly 909,000 times across the Apple App Store and Google Play, according to Craig Chapple, a mobile insights specialist at app analytics firm Sensor Tower.
Other elements, though, were most certainly at work. Tuned faced competition from more established social couple applications like Between and Couply, and the NPE team recently shifted to a new approach that is less focused on app development. As my colleague Sarah Perez reported late last year, NPE’s approach has evolved to encompass seed-stage investments in small, entrepreneurial teams, including firms headquartered outside of the United States.
On the other hand, it’s not uncommon for NPE to shut down trials rapidly – the team’s initiatives are sometimes more data collecting vehicles for Meta’s many platforms than fully fledged products.
NPE released a speed dating app only a few years ago. Personal project app Hobbi, conversational app Sparked, meme generator Whale Bump, Aux, Apple Watch app Kit, CatchUp audio calling app, and Collaborative Music App Collaborate, live event companion Venue, and forecast app Forecast Beyond Tuned, the only applications remaining accessible in the United States on iOS are Move and BARS; Tuned is the only NPE app available on Android in the United States.
Meta did not immediately react to a comment request.
You could have predicted this. Meta has repeatedly shut down experimental applications and even terminated higher-profile apps that failed to garner momentum. These closures allow the corporation to save money and concentrate on more popular platforms. Tuned has become an anomaly for a digital giant changing its focus from social networking to the metaverse.
