The New York Times said Thursday that it is shutting down its NYT Now app. The app was an attempt at developing a mobile product aimed at a younger audience. The app will stop being available for download on Aug. 29.

goodbye NYT Now pic.twitter.com/OOdocdITiZ

— Shan Wang ☃ (@shansquared) August 18, 2016

The Times launched the app in April 2014 as a paid product aimed at younger readers, but the app struggled to attract subscribers and the paper ultimately made the app free to use. NYT Now averaged 257,000 unique users over the past three months, the Times reported. At its highest point, in May 2015, the app had 334,000 unique users.

In a memo, Kinsey Wilson, the Times’ executive vice president for product and technology, and David Perpich, the Times’ senior vice president for product, said that the lessons learned from NYT Now already influence other Times products:

While NYT Now attracted a loyal following, these broader gains demonstrated that we did not need a separate lower-priced or limited free offering in the marketplace to drive growth. And we can focus our energy and resources on innovation in our main New York Times products (including Cooking, Crosswords and Watching) and on targeting younger readers where they often are: on social platforms.

Last year, the Times’ digital subscriber base grew to 1 million, and the paper has made digital subscriptions a priority moving forward. In 2014, the company generated $400 million in digital revenue, and last fall the Times said its goal is to double that to $800 million by 2020.

In a series of tweets, Clifford Levy, the assistant masthead editor overseeing digital platforms and the original newsroom leader of the NYT Now effort, explained the thinking behind the move:

1/10 Big news: We’re shutting @nytnow. The app was a milestone in the digital evolution of @nytimes https://t.co/jvMEPoKZXn

— Clifford Levy (@cliffordlevy) August 18, 2016

2/10 .@NYTNow demonstrated that we could fundamentally reimagine how we engage readers in the mobile era

— Clifford Levy (@cliffordlevy) August 18, 2016

3/10 We decided to close @nytnow bc we’ve moved all its pioneering innovations into the main @nytimes platforms

— Clifford Levy (@cliffordlevy) August 18, 2016

4/10 What made @nytnow different: a relaxed, conversational voice that felt native to mobile but still part of @nytimes

— Clifford Levy (@cliffordlevy) August 18, 2016

5/10 What else? Morning & Evening Briefings; expansive photos; animations; scannable text w/bullets to emphasize major points

— Clifford Levy (@cliffordlevy) August 18, 2016

6/10 If @nytnow advances now seem central to how broader @nytimes connects w/its audience in 2016, that’s because they are

— Clifford Levy (@cliffordlevy) August 18, 2016

7/10 Just over two years ago, the main @nytimes mobile app was little more than a gray list of headlines

— Clifford Levy (@cliffordlevy) August 18, 2016

8/10 Today, main @nytimes app is vibrant & compelling, w/highly curated feel. Changes can be credited to one source: @nytnow

— Clifford Levy (@cliffordlevy) August 18, 2016

NYT Now was one of a series of standalone subscription products the Times introduced in an attempt to attract new paying readers. In June 2014, it also introduced NYT Opinion, an app featuring the paper’s opinion content, but it shuttered the app that fall after failing to attract an audience. “The sheer volume of people looking at it wasn’t enough to sustain it,” Andy Rosenthal, then the Times opinion editor, told the Lab when the closure was announced. This is not us saying it didn’t work as a journalistic venture; it did. It’s just not working as a business.”

Since then, the Times has introduced NYT Cooking, which highlights the paper’s catalog of recipes. The cooking site and apps are free to use, but earlier this year the Times said it would begin partnering with a meal kit service that would allow users to buy the ingredients for the recipes. It’s also created Watching, a movie and TV recommendation site.

While NYT Now may not have attracted a large enough audience to make it sustainable — and, as Levy wrote, much of its DNA lives on in the main Times mobile app — users on Twitter nonetheless lamented the app’s closure:

I used @NYTNow even though I'm a subscriber. Was just the better app. Gotta be others like me.

— Eric Umansky (@ericuman) August 18, 2016

Holler at the folks who tried something different with @NYTNow.

— stacy-marie ishmael (@s_m_i) August 18, 2016

Think @nytimes may have underestimated the value-add of @NYTNow for some paid subscribers.

— Staci D Kramer (@sdkstl) August 18, 2016

Filed Under Everything I Love Dies https://t.co/7kBsoHNcwu

— Margarita Noriega ⚡️ (@margarita) August 18, 2016

NYT Now's demise is further proof (along w/ how this election has been covered) of how desperately our profession needs a new biz model.

— Anjali (@anjalimullany) August 18, 2016

The New York Times is shutting down its @NYTNow app, a product I used every day. https://t.co/jgKjEQMDq4

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) August 18, 2016

So sad to see the @NYTNow app is being shelved. I’ve really loved using it every day. Exceptional work, all: https://t.co/a3XJ4nOOdh

— Jason Santa Maria (@jasonsantamaria) August 18, 2016

A different and darker perspective:

News apps are a doomed genre https://t.co/Sfq46AhIme

— Joshua Topolsky (@joshuatopolsky) August 18, 2016