Tech

Facebook yanks off Notify news app

Published

8 years ago

June 3, 2016

Ripples Nigeria

Facebook’s attempt at a real-time, notification-based news app is shutting down.

Today Facebook sent an alert to users telling them “Thanks for using Notify.

We’re transitioning parts of Notify into other Facebook products, and the app will no longer be supported.”

Facebook launched Notify in November, allowing users to select from over 70 publishers that they wanted to send them news notifications.

People would receive short summaries they could click through to view full news articles. But within days, it seemed like most people had forgotten about the app, and Facebook never really talked about it again.

A statement by Facebook on the new development reads thus:

“Starting on Wednesday, we will begin integrating Notify functionality into other Facebook products, like Messenger, and will be removing Notify from the App Store. Since launching Notify, we’ve learned a lot about how to make notifications as timely and relevant as possible and we heard from people using the app that Notify helped them stay informed about things they cared about throughout the day.

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“With more than 900 million people using Messenger each month, we think there is a great opportunity for publishers to reach even more people interested in real-time updates from their favorite sources.” The statement read in full.

Publishers that were on Notify are desperately blasting their followers, pushing them to Like their Facebook Pages to stay connected.

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