Facebook is launching a new brand of experimental apps for consumers, developed under the “NPE Team, from Facebook” label. (NPE stands for “new product experimentation.”) The team will be developing new apps for iOS, Android, and the web, with a specific focus on consumer services, which is similar to Microsofts Garage group.
In a blog post announcing the new team, the company notes that it “decided to use this separate brand name to help set the appropriate expectations with users that NPE Team apps will change very rapidly and will be shut down if we learn that theyre not useful to people.”
Facebook is no stranger to odd experimental apps. The companys past is littered with abandoned products that Facebook has either launched or bought over the years, including things like Moments (a photo-harvesting service designed to collect all your pictures in one place), Notify (for subscribing to notifications), Lifestage (a Snapchat clone), Poke (another Snapchat clone), Slingshot (a third, different Snapchat clone), Tbh (a anonymous social media app), Moves (a fitness tracking app), and
