Meta to shutdown experimental app project 'Tuned' this September

Tuned, an app built by Meta’s New Product Experimentation team, will be shutting down. Users are reportedly receiving messages that encourage them to download their data before September 19 of this year.

The announcement was then later confirmed with the changes made to the app description of Tuned on the App Store, which reads:

The time has come to say goodbye… Tuned will be shutting down on 9/19/22.

We started as a small, experimental project in 2020, and are so proud of how many couples since then have told us Tuned brought them closer together. We are so grateful for all of the creativity and feedback from this community and thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We’ve learned so much from you.

To save a downloadable version of your content from Tuned, open your version of the app and navigate to Settings. Under Settings, you should tap the option to ‘Download My Data’. This will start a process to save all of your Tuned history and export it to a .zip file. When you open this .zip file, you should be able to see each individual photo or video asset saved along with an .html file that shows a full view of your whole feed history.

Tuned is a social app specifically designed for couples aged 13 and above who need “an intimate space” for their relationship. It is far from what the conventional Meta apps are targeting. Instead of connecting users to most of the population, Tuned is meant for couples who value one-on-one conversation. Further, according to Meta, this makes it a “shared scrapbook for these memorable moments that you and your partner can easily scroll through and reminisce on.” It allows users to invite their partners and offers a wide variety of features that both of them can do, such as sharing their moods and playing games together.

“With Tuned, you can be as mushy, quirky, and silly as you are together in person, even when you’re apart,” Meta described the app when it was first introduced in April 2020. “Send photo snapshots, notes, cards, voice memos and more, without broadcasting to the world or fear of messaging the wrong person. With password protection, unique invite codes, and privacy filters that let you blur images, Tuned helps keep your relationship’s artifacts between just the two of you.”

There are still no clear reasons for the termination of the app, but it is safe to say and assume that it doesn’t appeal to the taste of the general public. It has a very specific target market, leaving the rest of the public untouched. And although it has a good intention to help relationships “thrive,” we don’t think individuals would want an app that will constantly make their lives all about their relationship. Lastly, as of writing, the app only has 100K+ downloads on Google Play and 19.9K ratings on Apple Store.