Facebook says it is shutting down Lasso, its TikTok clone launched a year and a half ago, on July 10
the highest it has ever had — in Mexico — its biggest market — on June 1, according to App Annie. It had so few users on iOS, and it struggled so much in other markets, that App Annie could not track it. https://twitter.com/... Josh Constine -SignalFire / @joshconstine : Facebook's TikTok clone lasso is shutting down ahead of the Instagram Reels launch, so basically Fb lost 2 years by half-assing. Brb, gotta go save my zero Lassos https://twitter.com/... Turner Novak / @turnernovak : This is strange since Lasso (Facebook's TikTok clone) started doing well recently. Crossed 1 million monthly Android downloads for the first time in April, consistently top 10 in social in 2nd-6th largest countries in Latin America (never launched in Brazil). https://twitter.com/... Ingrid / @ingridlunden : For me, one takeaway of all the clones that FB makes + then shuts down is that these just don't work. Its most successful efforts outside main newsfeed have either been organic early moves of its own (eg Messenger, poss Workplace) or already-juggernauty acquisitions (Instagram). https://twitter.com/... Matt Navarra / @mattnavarra : I'm surprised they kept it going as long as they did. It was rubbish https://techcrunch.com/... Sid Jha / @sidharthajha : This move is so interesting considering that TikTok just got banned in India and it might get banned in other regions soon.... https://twitter.com/... Jane Manchun Wong / @wongmjane : @kerrymflynn There's no way Lasso can be successful when they heavily geofence the app See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
Lasso was Facebook's second bite at the short-video apple: after quietly launching the app in November 2018 as a direct TikTok competitor, the company now says it will switch Lasso off on July 10, roughly twenty months later. The exit data tells the story — App Annie tracked peak usage only in Mexico, Lasso's biggest market, while iOS usage was too small to measure.
The shutdown lands just before Instagram Reels launches, which suggests Facebook concluded a standalone clone could not beat TikTok and folded short-video into Instagram instead. It also rhymes with an earlier retreat: Facebook killed Bonfire, its Houseparty clone, in May 2019 after a similar run outside the US failed to stick.
First-order effects
- Facebook consolidates its short-video bet on Instagram Reels rather than running a separate app alongside it, and Lasso's small user base — concentrated on Android in Latin America, with Mexico as its top market per App Annie — gets a July 10 cutoff date.
Second-order effects
- TikTok loses its only big-tech clone competitor in-market at exactly the moment Instagram enters short video natively, meaning the competitive pressure shifts from copycat apps to Instagram's distribution advantage inside an installed base TikTok cannot match.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, platform companies stop funding standalone clones of breakout apps and instead absorb the format into existing networks — the same logic later showed up when Meta shut down Facebook Live Shopping to concentrate on Reels, and even TikTok itself retired its own side experiment by winding down TikTok Music.
The trend: Short-form social is consolidating into flagship platforms' native features, with standalone clones from both Facebook and TikTok being shut down once the format moves in-house.