Facebook is killing off its Creative Labs experiment

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg may be talking up his company's innovation drive around the world but back home in California, the social media giant has quietly pulled the plug on Creative Labs -- an initiative that allowed employees to attend binge-coding sessions to come out with experimental apps.

The programme was shut down after it failed to build apps that could gain traction with users, a CNET report said.

Apps that came out of the programme -- Slingshot, Rooms and Riff - have been removed from app stores and the web page for Creative Labs.

"Facebook is famous for its mantra 'Move fast and break things'. The company decided some of these initiatives had, in fact, failed to gain traction and is shutting them down," a Facebook spokesperson said.The shutdown of Creative Labs is nothing new for the Menlo Park-based company that regularly scraps projects with little output. It earlier removed its Poke and Camera applications, as well as physical gift offerings — which allowed users to purchase tangible goods such as stuffed animals, flowers and wine.

Slingshot was Facebook's SnapChat competitor, which let users share ephemeral photos and videos, while Rooms was a group-messaging service that brought a modern spin to chat rooms popular in the early days of the Internet. Riff allowed users to create and share short videos based on a theme.

The social networking site also said that it will still experiment with new apps, and support initiatives such as its Paper newsfeed-reading app in addition to others like Instagram's Hyperlapse video and Layouts photo editor.

The strong initiative drive is part of the company strategy Zuckerberg hinted during his visit to India, saying Facebook was planning to integrate various innovations in the social network, including virtual reality.