Meta secretly published Forum, an application designed for Facebook groups

According to Geekout Newsletter, Meta has secretly installed a new application called “Forum” on App Store, which is described as a “space dedicated to critical dialogue” for Facebook groups. Meta seems to be emphasizing that Forum can help users get “real answers” from “real people”, similar to Reddit’s function.

Users need to have Facebook accounts to use Forum. Upon login, the user ‘ s personal data and activities will be kept. So Forum is not a website for anonymous conversations like Reddit, but users will be able to use anonymous user names like in the main Facebook application. The difference is that the administrator will be able to see the true identity of the user.

Facebook messages show good friends, joined groups and a home page of interest, and Facebook algorithms recommend random posts that may be of interest to users. Forum, on the other hand, presents users’ presentations in various groups. However, Forum also collects content of interest to users when new users first land, so it is likely that it will present to users the posts of other groups that may be of interest.

Any content published by the user in the Forum group will be displayed in the Facebook main application and vice versa, enabling the user to easily continue or start a conversation from both applications.

This is not the first time that Meta has introduced group-centred applications. As early as the Facebook period, the company had issued an independent group application, which eventually closed in 2017. But this new application, like most of today ‘ s applications, is partially AI-based. The first is “Ask”. Meta indicated that Ask could extract responses from various groups to answer user questions so that users would not have to search for the required information on a group-by-group basis. Another AI function is an assistant administrator who helps the owner manage their group.

Meta indicated that the product was still being tested. “We are openly testing many new products to see which applications users find interesting and practical.”