3 Apps from Big Companies That Ended Up Being a Failure

Large companies haven't always been successful in launching apps. Even popular companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook have made major mistakes that led to spectacular failures.

Sometimes due to rushing, sometimes due to a lack of resources, creating poor imitations of highly successful apps, or simply due to rejection by the majority of users, apps from large companies have been destined to fail.

Facebook Stories

Facebook Stories is an example of a failed app, since in an attempt to compete with Snapchat it did not deliver the expected results, disappointing users who decided to continue using Snapchat for all the features it offered.

Users preferred to use Snapchat or Instagram Stories, which also follows the same line as Facebook Stories, whether due to the format, design, way of using it or all of the above, but users did not use Facebook Stories because it did not meet all their expectations.

Google Reader

The case of Google Reader is different. In this instance, it wasn't because users disliked it, but because they realized it wasn't a financially viable project and decided to shut it down, leaving millions of users without this tool without warning. New apps were arriving with force, including news aggregators and readers, which might have displaced Google Reader anyway.

Vine. Twitter's biggest flop

Twitter's biggest failure was Vine, an app that served as a social platform for sharing short, looping videos, which reached peak popularity in 2015. But with the arrival of Instagram, everything changed. Instagram began including short video clips in a more complete and engaging format, and that led most of Vine's followers to become Instagrammers.

Later, Twitter tried to revive its most successful app by transforming Vine into Vine Camera, which allowed users to upload Vines to the social network and provided storage for them. However, it lost the features of a social network, such as profiles, followers, and comments, and was therefore completely abandoned by users.

These are just a few examples, but we can find many more failed attempts at apps, which have been forgotten or failed within days of their launch.

Not all apps fail for the same reason, but they usually have something in common: they failed to win over users, for whatever reason. This means that before launching an app, it's essential to listen to users, understand their needs, and know what we can offer.