GoKawiilMeta has launched a new app called Forum without fanfare or even an official announcement. Geekout Newsletter's Matt Navarra has spotted Forum in the App Store, where it is described as "a dedicated space for the conversations that matter most to you," created specifically for Facebook Groups. As Navarra notes, Meta seems to be pushing the idea that the app can help users get "real answers" from "real people," making it sound like it could serve a purpose similar to Reddit's.
Users will need to have a Facebook account to be able to use Forum, and their profile and activity will carry over after they log in with their credentials. So it's not really a website for anonymous conversations like Reddit, but users will be able to use anonymized usernames like they already can on the main Facebook app. It's just that administrators will be able to see their real identities.
Unlike the Facebook feed that shows a collection of posts from a user's friends, the groups they're in, the Pages they follow and random posts Facebook's algorithm thinks they might be interested in, Forum's feed will feature conversations from their various Groups. Since the new app asks users what they want to see more of upon logging in for the first time, though, it will also most likely show users posts from other Groups that may align with their interests. Anything a user posts in their Groups on Forum will still show up on the main Facebook app, and vice versa, enabling users to easily continue or start conversations from either application.
This isn't the first time Meta launched an app centered around Groups. Back when it was just known as Facebook, the company also released a standalone Groups app, which it eventually killed back in 2017. But this new app, like most apps these days, comes with a couple of AI features. The first one is "Ask." Meta says Ask can pull responses across groups to answer a user's questions, so they don't have to search their Groups one by one for the information they need. The other AI feature is an admin assistant that can help moderators manage their Groups. When we asked the company about the new app, Meta indicated that the product is still under testing at the moment. "We test lots of new products publicly to see what people find interesting and useful to their experiences across our apps," a spokesperson told us.