Facebook launched its group video chat app ‘Bonfire’ in 2017. It was a clone of the group video chat app ‘Houseparty’ and today, Facebook has announced that it will be shutting down the Bonfire app as it did not receive the interest the company expected.
Facebook started testing its group video chat app Bonfire in Denmark and other countries in Europe last year and it was a clone of ‘Houseparty’ app which was popular at that time. Houseparty had a synchronous group video chat feature where participants would open the app to see who was already online, hanging out digitally. However, the app did not receive the interest that Facebook expected.
According to reports, HouseParty app’s rank in the App Store declined to #327 a year ago and the app stopped being a threat to Facebook which led to Facebook’s decision of shutting down ‘Bonfire’ now.
The group video chat has now become a feature of Facebook’s other apps Instagram and Messenger where it is baked into the app itself. The company has announced that it will support Bonfire till this month.
Commenting on this, Facebook said:
In May we’ll be ending support for the Bonfire tests. We’ll incorporate elements of what we learned into other current and future products.