Facebook forms NPE team to experiment with new apps and scrap them, if not useful
Facebook hopes to provide ‘entirely new experiences’ and has promised that the apps will align with Facebook’s mission of giving people the power to build a community. The apps will be available on App Store, Google Play Store and on the web as well.
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Facebook on Tuesday announced that it is launching customer-focused apps in the coming weeks. It will be launched under the developer name ‘NPE Team, from Facebook’. NPE stands for New Product Experimentation (NPE).
If found that the apps are not useful after the team starts releasing the apps, the project will be shut down, Facebook said.
With the separate developer name, Facebook is giving itself a room to make mistakes. In a blog post, the company said,
“We decided to create this separate developer name to help set the appropriate expectations with people. Unlike Facebook’s family of apps, NPE Team apps will change very rapidly. We expect many failures and also want to minimise disruption to the billions of people who use Facebook apps every day.”
Chief Technology Officer(CTO) Mike Schroepfer will head and experiment with the team, Kurt Wagner, a technology reporter at Bloomberg said on Twitter.
Once live, the apps will be available on the App Store, Google Play Store and on the web as well.
The social media giant hopes to provide ‘entirely new experiences’ and promised that the apps will align with Facebook’s mission of giving people the power to build a community.
The social media giant had earlier experimented with a number of apps including Lifestage and Poke, which are clones of Snapchat and also acquired Tbh, an anonymous app that was popular among teens.
The company laid emphasis on the fact that users will have control over personal data in all its products, including apps that will be released later from the NPE team.
“We will work hard to keep people’s information secure and leverage our internal tools, systems, and expertise inside the company for future NPE products,” Facebook confirmed.
Facebook’s Terms of Service and Data Policy will look after services offered by the NPE Team before the apps are shipped. It will also post NPE Team Supplemental Terms soon.
(Edited by Rekha Balakrishnan)
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