Pinterest is shutting down Math Camp apps this month

Shorts and Roll will be gone on August 30, as Pinterest incorporates the Math Camp team

When Pinterest acquired mobile app developer Math Camp in July, it was made clear that the company's apps were not long for the world, though details at the time were scarce.

Now the company has made the end date more explicit; in an e-mail sent to users over the weekend, Math Camp revealed that at least two of its apps will be shutting down on August 30, according to a report from VentureBeat. 

The two apps that will be sunsetting are Shorts and Roll. Shorts is an iOS app that allows users to follow their friends' camera rolls, and Roll is an app that makes it faster to share photos from a camera roll.

This is the e-mail that was sent out announcing the news (this is the one for Shorts; the e-mail for Rolls was the same):

"Last month we announced that we were being acquired by Pinterest and that Shorts would be shutting down.

We wanted to let you know that Shorts will officially be going offline this Tuesday, August 30th at 12:01am. Please make sure you share your final photos before then and download any from friends that you’d like to keep.

We can’t tell you how much we appreciate your using the app, and we hope to build lots of great new things for you down the road."

Math Camp is also the company behind Highlight,  a mobile ambient awareness app that sends the user a push notification when they are near another Highlight user. There has been no word on Highlight's fate so far, though it would seem likely that it would also be shutting down on the same day.

When Pinterest bought Math Camp's technology, a Pinterest spokesperson told me it would "sunset its apps in the coming weeks," though the company will also open-source a wide range of Math Camp's libraries and frameworks, "so that the developer community can benefit from their engineering work."

VatorNews has reached out to Pinterest for confirmation of the shut down announcement, as well as to find out more about Highlight. We will update this story if we learn more. 

Rather than acquire Math Camp for its technology, Pinterest was interested in the team, using their experience developing mobile discovery products, bringing that to Pinterest's engineering, product and design teams.

Pinterest didn't say what the Math Camp team will work on, specifically, but it would seem to be a good fit with the company's efforts in visual search, given the team's experience with mobile discovery, particularly with Highlight.

Math Camp was the latest in a series of acqui-hires for Pinterest It first brought over Daniel Nordh, the founder of design app Curator, in April, before hiring the team behind URX, a mobile deeplinking provider, in May. It also purchased the team from smart keyboard app Fleksy in June. The company also acquired the team behind shopping app tote.

Last week, Pinterest bought Instapaper from Betworks, it's sixth acquisition of the year, and the first that wasn't specifically focus on the team. 

(Image source: wendyscott.me)