The best social media app, Zenly, will sadly be discontinued on February 3rd

The popular social mapping tool Zenly, which Snap purchased five years ago, will be discontinued on February 3rd, 2023. There is nothing quite like Zenly, thus it will be a sad day.

The Paris-based team succeeded in developing an app that straddled the line between a social app and a utilitarian tool. More importantly, using Zenly every day was a pleasure after opening it. The app sets a high bar for other social app developers and should be regarded as one of the most polished and creative social apps of all time.

The basic function of Zenly allows you to track the whereabouts of your pals. You may check if friends and relatives are hanging out together and where they are right now when you open the app. Additionally, Zenly boasts one of the liveliest messaging interfaces of any social app.

Zenly recently added places. You could see your friends’ favorite pubs and restaurants and even their own customized map of locations, making it the most private database of locations. It quickly evolved into a contemporary Foursquare for my friends’ group.

Additionally, the development group began releasing its own maps. In essence, Zenly was insane enough to believe that a team of 10 individuals working on a mapping project could compete with Google Maps and Apple Maps.

It was the most entertaining and recognizable map app on my phone rather than the most precise map in the entire planet. Autos, boats, rubber ducks, trucks, and other sea life were all animated. The time I spent flying above Paris and exploring new regions was considerable.

In 2011, Zenly was established. The startup was expanding well, but after Snap acquired it in 2017, things got serious. Zenly achieved 35 million monthly active users earlier this year.

A crucial year for the social app has been 2022. Co-founder and CEO Antoine Martin left Zenly after the company unveiled a complete redesign. “We started working on Zenly 11 years ago, and we joined Snap five years ago. I want to continue. In an earlier interview this year, Martin said, “And I haven’t had the chance to take a long paternity leave.

 

A few months later, everyone was shocked when Snap, the company that owns Snapchat, revealed that Zenly would be shut down as part of a round of layoffs. Zenly certainly wasn’t as popular as Snapchat. Undoubtedly, there was no monetization plan. But it was a well-liked, ground-breaking, and incredibly promising app.

Snap nonetheless made the decision not to spin off a new company or sell Zenly to another firm. Zenly would have become a rival, specifically serving as an alternative to Snap Map.

All of this brings Zenly, the social app that encouraged you to travel and spend more time with friends, to a close. My Zenly account was created on July 30, 2015. I now have 59 days left on my app subscription. It’s awful.