Mobile Apps

Apps that were pulled from the stores or had their servers switched off.

16 projects

Foursquare City Guide The check-in app that made mayors and badges, split into two, then closed to focus on the half it had spun off 2009–2024 Mobile Apps Houseparty The lockdown living room, closed by Fortnite's owner 2016–2021 Mobile Apps Wunderlist The to-do app Microsoft bought to bury 2010–2020 Mobile Apps Google Goggles Point your phone at a landmark, a book or a wine label and Google told you what it was, eight years before Lens replaced it 2009–2018 Mobile Apps Miitomo Nintendo's first smartphone app: a Mii that asked you questions and told your friends the answers, switched off two years later 2016–2018 Mobile Apps Yo An app that said one word, raised a million dollars, and became the whole 2014 app economy in miniature 2014–2016 Mobile Apps Sunrise Calendar The calendar app everyone recommended, bought by Microsoft for about $100 million and dismantled into Outlook 2013–2016 Mobile Apps Skype Qik The live phone-video pioneer Skype paid $150 million for, shut down, relaunched as a messaging app, and shut down again 2007–2016 Mobile Apps Secret Anonymous confessions from your own contacts, worth $100 million for about a year 2014–2015 Mobile Apps Readmill The Berlin e-book reader that put your highlights in the margin for other people to see, bought by Dropbox for its team and closed within three months 2011–2014 Mobile Apps Bump Tap two phones together to swap contacts: 125 million downloads, a Google acquisition, and a shutdown three months later 2009–2014 Mobile Apps Google Latitude See where your friends are on a map: Google's location sharing, four years ahead of its time and folded into Google+ in 2013 2009–2013 Mobile Apps Astrid The to-do app with the friendly squid, four million users, bought by Yahoo and closed 96 days later 2008–2013 Mobile Apps Color Forty-one million dollars before launch, an app nobody understood, and a shutdown within two years: the cautionary tale of the 2011 app boom 2011–2012 Mobile Apps Gowalla The prettier check-in app from Austin that lost the SXSW war to Foursquare, was bought by Facebook for its team and switched off three months later 2009–2012 Mobile Apps Loopt Sam Altman's first company: see where your friends are, years before phones could 2006–2012 Mobile Apps