For those who were really active on Facebook, you may remember a standalone app for all of your Facebook Groups. It was launched back in 2014, and then discontinued in 2017. But it looks like the company now known as Meta may be thinking of bringing it back. This is because a new app called Forum has appeared, looking to do the same thing.

The app was first spotted by social media consultant Matt Navarra on the Apple App Store, screenshots of which he’s shared on Threads. From Navarra’s posts, it’s being described as somewhere to go to get “real answers from real people”, a description usually attributed to Reddit instead.

Per the posts, Navarra describes Forum as allowing users to “ask questions across multiple groups at once instead of searching endless posts manually”. He also speculates that “Meta increasingly sees communities and niche discussions as more valuable than the public social feed”.

Navarra also shows a short clip of the signing in process, which includes using the primary Facebook account in the process. It’s unclear if this is a requirement, though it wouldn’t be surprising if it was. It’s centred around groups that you are in after all, which are then presented in a feed. Engadget reports that posts that you make to your Groups on this app will be reflected on Facebook proper.

In response to an email query, a Meta spokesperson tells Navarra that “we test lots of new products publicly to see what people find interesting and useful to their experiences across our apps”. Which may explain to some degree why it’s not made available on our side of the globe; visiting the app’s page simply brings up the message “this app is currently not available in your country or region” once you open it on the Apple App Store instead. It remains to be seen if this test will make its way here, or simply launch officially at some point.

(Source: Matt Navarra / Threads, Engadget)