Meta Is Breaking Up With Its Couples App, Tuned

pcmag.com:

Meta is reportedly shutting down Tuned, a social app for couples, in September.

The company released Tuned in April 2020 as "a private space where you and your significant other can just be yourselves." (Which turned out to be unfortunate timing, because throughout the course of the pandemic, many couples have quite literally been in private spaces for years.)

TechCrunch reports(Opens in a new window) that Tuned users started to receive notifications warning them of the app's impending shutdown earlier this month. Meta has also updated Tuned's description on the App Store(Opens in a new window) to advise users to download their data before it disappears on Sept. 19.

"We started as a small, experimental project in 2020," Meta says in Tuned's latest App Store release notes, "and are so proud of how many couples since then have told us Tuned brought them closer together. We are so grateful for all of the creativity and feedback from this community and thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We’ve learned so much from you."

Tuned's days were probably numbered from the beginning. The app was released by the New Product Experimentation (NPE) Team as part of Facebook's (and now Meta's) efforts to give employees room to explore ideas that aren't necessarily meant to be part of the main platform.

Specifically labeling something an experiment rarely bodes well for a new service. Meta has also been slowing recruitment—and encouraging some of its current employees to leave—amid what Mark Zuckerberg said "might be one of the worst downturns that we've seen in recent history."

Instructions for downloading data from Tuned are available via the App Store and Google Play(Opens in a new window).

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