Mark Zuckerberg Says That Facebook's Failed Snapchat Competitor Poke Was 'More Of A Joke'
When Facebook released Poke in December 2012, people called out the app as a Snapchat clone since its main use was to let users send self-destructing photos and videos.
The app never caught on, usage fizzled out, and it joined the ranks of Facebook Home and the revamped News Feed as heavily promoted flops.
Now, Zuckerberg claims in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek that Poke was "more of a joke" than a real attempt to make a successful app.
"A few people built it in a hackathon thing, and we made one release and then just kind of abandoned it and haven't touched it since," Zuckerberg says.
Facebook just launched a news curation app called Paper, and although there's a lot of hype surrounding it, Zuck's nonchalance about Poke's failure makes one thing clear: The company doesn't need massive success with its new apps.
According to Bloomberg, Facebook is sitting on about $11.5 billion in cash, and with that kind of money, experimentation and mistakes are not a big deal.