Meta Unveils Forum App For Reddit-Style Facebook Groups

Meta has quietly launched a new group discovery app designed to make Facebook Groups feel more structured and conversation-focused, in a Reddit-like format.

The new app, called Forum, is built around group discussions and questions. It uses tools to organise and highlight responses from different communities.

Forum is essentially a separate app for group discussions, bringing together all the groups that a user is a member of on Facebook into a dedicated engagement experience. 

It is currently available as a standalone iOS app in the United States.

Conversation-first feed

The app pulls users directly from their existing Facebook Groups after login and reorganises activity into a conversation-first feed designed to prioritise questions and responses over passive browsing. Meta describes it as “a dedicated space built for deeper discussions, real answers and communities you care about.”

A central feature is an “Ask” function that encourages users to pose questions across multiple groups, with responses aggregated into a single thread. Meta says this is intended to surface “what real people are saying, not just what’s trending.”

AI-driven functionality

Forum also introduces AI-driven functionality at multiple levels of the product. An assistant helps group administrators moderate content and filter discussions, while the Ask system uses AI to compile responses drawn from group conversations.

Users are able to post under nicknames rather than full Facebook identities, while their profiles are simplified to show only group-related activity. Meta says anything shared in Forum remains visible within Facebook Groups, maintaining integration between the two systems.

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The company has tested similar ideas before. A dedicated Groups app launched in 2014 was discontinued in 2017, raising questions about whether Forum can succeed where earlier attempts failed.

Speaking about its approach to product development, Meta communications manager Feryal Hemamda said: “We test lots of new products publicly to see what people find interesting and useful to their experiences across our apps.”

Standalone applications

The launch also aligns with broader strategic thinking inside Meta. Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has suggested the company could expand into building far more standalone applications, telling employees: “can we build 50 new apps? Like, yeah probably. But we probably should start by doing a few before we just, like, ramp up trying to do 50 all at once.”

Forum’s limited rollout on iOS in the US looks more like a controlled test than a full product launch. But its design, especially the focus on AI-assisted answers, suggests a bigger shift: Meta may be trying to turn group conversations into organised, reusable streams of information rather than loose discussions.