Meta has a brand new app on the App Retailer, and it seems to be an terrible lot like Reddit.
The app, known as Discussion board, is “a devoted area constructed for deeper discussions, actual solutions and communities you care about,” in accordance with its App Store page.
In observe, it’s only a standalone app model of Fb’s current Teams function, by which Fb customers can be a part of teams and take part in discussions. Within the new standalone app, the feed is solely targeted on the conversations happening within the teams you might be already part of in your current Fb account. Discussion board and Fb are nonetheless linked, that means that you would be able to enter Discussion board along with your Fb login, and no matter you publish on there will likely be seen in your teams on the Fb app as effectively.
Some readers is perhaps getting deja vu, and rightfully so, as a result of that is Meta’s second try at launching a stand-alone Fb Teams app. Then referred to as Fb, the corporate launched the same, devoted app again in 2014 that was in the end discontinued in 2017.
Maybe to spice issues up a bit, this time round, Meta can be together with a devoted AI assistant within the app. The “Ask” function on the app will depend on the knowledge posted on the group pages to answer customers in search of “opinions, recommendation or suggestions,” Meta mentioned. There’s additionally an extra AI assistant for group admins, which is able to supposedly help them with duties like content material moderation.
Some monetary analysts thought of the app a direct threat to Reddit, inflicting the corporate’s inventory to finish the day down greater than 5%, however the apps have vastly totally different current consumer bases. Both approach, it’s too quickly to inform whether or not there’ll finally be important consumer migration from Reddit to Discussion board.
This isn’t Meta’s first try at making its personal model of an already profitable app or function. The corporate launched its Twitter competitor app Threads in 2023, and most not too long ago, it debuted Instants, an Instagram app that goals to duplicate the successes of Snapchat and BeReal with instantaneous, disappearing photographs.
Curiously, this time round, Meta launched this app with little fanfare. There was no main announcement or press launch that we might discover. The app simply appeared on the App Retailer, and a few eagle-eyed customers seen it. Which raises the query, might this be the beginning of an AI-enabled flood of recent apps that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly promised staff?
Late final month, the tech/ai/mark-zuckerberg-blames-slower-sales-on-war-layoffs-on-ai-costs-in-meeting-2e9f8cac”>Wall Avenue Journal printed a bit detailing a companywide assembly by which Zuckerberg talked about Meta’s AI overhaul that has been used to justify a brutal round of layoffs. In line with the report, Zuckerberg touted the effectivity beneficial properties from infusing AI into workflows and the way the corporate will “have the ability to spin up extra new tasks” now due to this. These new tasks, in accordance with the report, embody creating extra apps.
“So like Chris [Cox, Meta’s chief product officer] and I’ve been speaking about, ‘all proper, effectively, can we construct 50 new apps? Like, yeah, most likely,” Zuckerberg is quoted to have mentioned within the article. “However we most likely ought to begin by doing a couple of earlier than we simply, like, ramp up making an attempt to do 50 suddenly.”
