Meta’s Forum is part Reddit, part Facebook, and part Google AI Overview
Meta’s new Forum app for iPhone takes Facebook Groups and moves them to a dedicated app with a dedicated AI chatbot to accompany it, as an AI overhaul of the ill-fated Facebook Groups app that closed in 2017.
Rather than going to ChatGPT or clicking “Reddit” at the end of a Google search, Forum users can view, search and post advice directly in their Facebook groups, with the optional help of Meta’s AI.
After logging in with my Facebook account, Forum automatically pulled the groups I was a part of on Facebook and populated my feed with posts from those groups, as well as suggestions for groups I’m not a part of, similar to my Reddit feed, although without the Reddit handle.
Groups aren’t front and center on Facebook, so I wasn’t surprised to find some on my list that I had completely forgotten about. Besides the feed, you can also view a mini version of your Facebook profile that only shows posts from your group, browse new groups, and post directly to specific groups.
The Forum’s AI chatbot can be found under the “Ask” tab, where you can get AI-generated responses from posts on various Facebook groups, similar to how Google search results and AI previews pull in licensed Reddit content and other sources across the internet.
To try it out, I asked the AI a few questions about Magic: The Gathering. The Meta chatbot referenced the publications of a few Magic groups I’m in and have given generally sound advice, with suggestions for groups in my area of New Jersey. The results included posts that the AI referenced, so you can tap them to see the full conversation around those posts.
Meta Communications Manager Feryal Hemamda confirmed the launch of the Forum in a statement to The edge: “We publicly test many new products to see what people find interesting and useful for their experiences across our apps.”
