TechCrunch reported on the 22nd (local time) that Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has launched a new social media app, "Forum," similar to the U.S. online community platform "Reddit." On news that Meta, a "social media powerhouse," is moving into online discussions, Reddit's share price fell about 6% intraday.
Forum is a spinout of Facebook's "Groups" feature, where users with similar interests gather. You can log in with a Facebook account, but you won't see friends' updates or algorithm-based recommended content.
According to Meta, Forum operates with a focus on users' conversations and in-depth discussions on shared interests. It also comes with a feature that finds desired answers at once from posts across groups a user has joined and an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant to help group admins. When a user enters a question, they can receive a consolidated answer based on discussions across multiple groups.
Meta said, "Users can check not just what's trending but what real people are actually saying, and they can easily pick up where they left off in a previous conversation," adding that it is "a dedicated space for deeper discussions, real answers, and communities users care about."
Forum has launched first in beta on Apple's iOS. Investment bank Truist said Forum "appears to be Meta's attempt to compete with Reddit in the market for open online discussion forums" and "could be a new threat." In fact, Threads, a text-based social media platform Meta released in July 2023 as a "counter to X," has grown rapidly over three years, with its user base increasing to a level that threatens X.
Last month, Meta introduced "Instants," a Snapchat-style app on Instagram that lets friends share photos that disappear upon viewing, and last year it released "Meta Edits," a video editing app similar to ByteDance Ltd.'s "CapCut."
This is seen as part of Meta's strategy to expand its social media offerings using AI. According to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently told employees, "We're now able to develop 50 new apps with AI," adding, "Before we push all 50 at once, we should first build a few on a trial basis and gauge the response."
Meta recently carried out restructuring that cut 10% of its total staff to address rising expenses from massive AI infrastructure investments. The move is seen as an effort to continue investing in AI while reducing headcount and, by leveraging AI to roll out a variety of apps, to make a full-fledged push to diversify revenue.