When you are a company the size of FB/Googs, a product that is only used in such a niche way by such a small number of users is not a successful product. So yeah, they would probably much rather the public think of it as an experiment that didn't gain traction to save face rather than releasing yet another failing product. The example you described would probably have users described with numbers in the thousands. These companies are used to numbers in the billions, so that doesn't even make them get out of bed in the morning.