Today is a rather interesting and eyebrow raising day. Dropbox, the file sharing and storing mammoth has announced that it will be shutting down Mailbox and Carousel services in early 2016. Facebook on the other hand, has made a similar move where it has shut down Creative Labs, axing Slingshot, Rooms and Riff apps along with it.
Let's start with Dropbox.
Dropbox made the big move and acquired Mailbox back in 2013, and the company went on further to enhance its service portfolio by then launching Carousel. Sadly though, according to Dropbox, they want to focus more on their core product, hence they've made the bold decision to shut down both Mailbox and Carousel.
Interestingly though, the company went on to state that the best of Carousel and Mailbox will live in the main Dropbox app itself.
According to Dropbox:
The Carousel and Mailbox teams have built products that are loved by many people and their work will continue to have an impact. We’ll be taking key features from Carousel back to the place where your photos live—in the Dropbox app. We’ll also be using what we’ve learned from Mailbox to build new ways to communicate and collaborate on Dropbox (you can see early signs of this focus with Paper).
I, personally, was a huge fan of Mailbox due to its sheer simplicity. But lately, it had become evident that Dropbox will eventually give up the ghost on it. Today's announcement only reaffirms that notion.
Dropbox has stated that it will shut down Mailbox on February 26th, while Carousel will eat dirt on March 31st, 2016.
On Facebook's end, things aren't too different either, as the company has went forward to shut down Creative Labs, known for creating a handful of great apps, which unluckily failed to take off. The damage of Creative Labs will be felt by Facebook's Slingshot, Riff and Room apps, and the company has made the move to remove the apps from the App Store and Google Play immediately.
According to a Facebook spokesperson in a statement to CNet:
"Since their launches, we've incorporated elements of Slingshot, Riff and Rooms into the Facebook for iOS and Android apps," a Facebook spokeswoman said. "We haven't updated these apps in some time and we've decided to officially end support by removing them from the App Store and Google Play."
As we move into the future, let's just hope these moves made by Dropbox and Facebook will make room for more innovative product and do not spawn a wave of apps being axed altogether.
