Facebook has launched a new app that functions as a private space for couples who might be separated due to social distancing guidelines in force across many parts of the world battling the coronavirus pandemic.
The Tuned app, which is available on Apple Store, allows couples to a variety of stuff between partners that even includes a daily diary feature. In the app description on iOS, Facebook calls it “a private space where you and your significant other can just be yourselves.”
The scrapbook-like app, developed by the company’s New Product Experimentation (NPE) team, allows couples to share photographs, notes, voice memos, cards, music from Spotify, and their moods online. “With Tuned, you can be as mushy, quirky, and silly as you are together in person, even when you’re apart,” says the app description.
The app, which is available for free for the iPhone and iPad, clearly establishes that users have to be 13 years or above in age for signing up. By the look of things, it has only been released in select geographies. A search on the App Store from India proved fruitless.
Facebook had launched the NPE sometime last year and had previously launched the meme-creation app called Whale as well as Hobbi, which is a Pinterest-like app that focused on hobbies.
A report in The Information quoted a Facebook spokesperson to suggest that the app was released under the NPE to help set the appropriate expectations with users that in case it is found that it isn’t really meeting user expectations, the app is likely to be shut down.
The NPE team had launched Hobbi as a photo and video sharing app in February, where users could document personal projects and hobbies using photographs. Though inspired by Pinterest UI, the app organizes themed collections of hobbies such as gardening, cooking, arts and craft, and décor.
Facebook didn’t publicize the launch of Hobbi. However, social media watchers did not fail to notice the timing of the launch, which happened shortly after Google’s Area 120 incubator launched Tangi, which also focused on hobbies, creativity, and DIY content.
