Meta just made a surprise move into Reddit's territory. The social media giant quietly launched Forum, a standalone app designed for what the company calls "deeper discussions, real answers and communities you care about." The stealth launch signals Meta's latest attempt to capture more of the online community space, setting up a direct challenge to Reddit's decade-long dominance in threaded discussions and niche forums.
Meta dropped Forum into app stores with little fanfare, but the implications are massive for the social media landscape. The new app represents Meta's most direct challenge yet to Reddit's stranglehold on community-driven discussions and forums.
According to the app's description obtained by TechCrunch, Forum is pitched as a "dedicated space built for deeper discussions, real answers and communities you care about." That language takes clear aim at Reddit's core value proposition - the kind of substantive, threaded conversations that have made it the internet's go-to destination for everything from tech support to niche hobbies.
The quiet launch is classic Meta playbook. Rather than a splashy announcement, the company appears to be soft-launching Forum to gauge user interest and gather feedback before committing to a major promotional push. It's the same strategy Meta used with Threads, which exploded to 100 million users despite a relatively understated debut.
Meta's timing is interesting. Reddit has faced growing pains over the past year, with API changes sparking moderator revolts and users seeking alternatives. The company went public in 2024, and the pressure to monetize has created friction with its famously vocal user base. Meta clearly sees an opening.
But Forum faces an uphill battle. Reddit's communities are deeply entrenched, with years of built-up content, inside jokes, and cultural norms. Moderators have invested countless hours building their subreddits. Convincing users to migrate to a Meta-owned platform won't be easy, especially given the company's mixed reputation on privacy and content moderation.
Forum also raises questions about how it fits into Meta's broader ecosystem. Will it integrate with Facebook Groups, which already serves hundreds of millions of users? Or is this a standalone play to capture a younger, more Reddit-native audience that might never touch Facebook? The company hasn't revealed details on the integration strategy.
The move shows Meta isn't content to rest on its laurels with Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Even as the company pours billions into the metaverse and AI, it's still aggressively expanding its social media footprint. Threads proved there's still appetite for new social platforms when executed well - it hit 150 million monthly users within months.
For Reddit, Forum represents the most serious competitive threat it's faced in years. Twitter never cracked threaded discussions. Discord caters to real-time chat more than asynchronous forums. But Meta has the resources, scale, and distribution to actually build a viable alternative. If Forum gains traction, Reddit could see its user growth stall or even reverse.
The app's focus on "real answers" also hints at Meta's strategy. Reddit has become the internet's de facto Q&A platform, with users appending "reddit" to Google searches to find authentic discussions. If Meta can surface quality answers and build trust with users, Forum could chip away at that behavior.
What remains unclear is how Meta plans to monetize Forum without alienating users. Reddit's advertising has always been less intrusive than Facebook's, and users are sensitive to changes. Meta's ad-targeting capabilities are powerful, but deploying them too aggressively could kill Forum before it gains momentum.
Meta's Forum launch marks a bold bet that there's room for another major player in online communities. The quiet rollout suggests the company is being strategic, testing the waters before going all-in. For users, more competition could mean better features and less platform lock-in. For Reddit, it's a wake-up call that its position isn't as secure as it might have seemed six months ago. The next few months will reveal whether Meta can actually pull off the difficult task of building a thriving forum culture from scratch, or if Forum becomes another forgotten experiment in the company's long history of trying to capture the next big thing in social.
