Facebook’s attempt to steal market share from Snapchat has officially failed, with Facebook’s Poke application dropping off of Apple’s list of top 700 free apps on Monday.

The demise of Poke is a classic example of poor branding, with one noticeable twist. Like Snapchat, Poke was an app that sent self destructing text messages, but the key difference was …actually there was no key difference. One was simply an app that was NOT associated with Facebook. Very few brand names are strong enough to persuade consumers to switch from an app that they are comfortable with. Facebook should have recognized this considering the fact that it was not their name, but their site’s security, that allowed them to steal market share from competitors such as Myspace back in the mid 2000s.

The twist was that Poke’s entry into the timed text market actually caused Snapchat to gain ground. Poke was branded as a Facebook product, and Facebook is now a $100 billion mega corporation. Snapchat is growing steadily, but has none of Facebook’s mass. So when Poke entered the market, users saw the two apps locked in a David vs. Goliath style combat, and no one likes Goliath. Snapchat, which is run by four young Stanford grads, broke into the top 5 free apps for the first time if for no other reason than new consumers decided to use a product that was not Facebook.