“Constructed for the teams you already love.” That is what Meta is promising with Discussion board, a brand new app from the corporate, which it quietly launched on Friday. Solely out there on iPhones for now, the app brings collectively your whole Fb teams right into a single feed.
It really works like this: Assuming you belong to a number of Fb teams, Discussion board brings collectively posts from these teams, surfacing them in your feed with none algorithmic suggestions or posts from buddies. If you happen to make a submit to a gaggle in your Discussion board feed, that submit will seem in that group feed, and vice versa.
The app additionally has an AI characteristic referred to as Ask, accessed by a button to the correct of the house web page button on the horizontal menu at backside. With Ask, you’ll be able to seek for one thing throughout all of your teams as an alternative of getting to scroll round each to seek out it.
“Your feed is constructed round conversations from teams,” stated Meta within the App Store listing. “See what actual persons are saying, not simply what’s trending, and simply leap again in the place you left off.”
To get Discussion board, obtain it from the App Retailer in your iPhone. The app will then ask which Fb account you wish to join with, and “your teams, profile and exercise carry over,” Meta stated within the itemizing.
Maybe oddly, Meta didn’t announce Discussion board on both its newsroom page or on its X account. Social media marketing consultant Matt Navarra noticed that the app had launched and posted about it on Threads, saying the Discussion board seems similar to Reddit, with its emphasis on “actual folks” within the Discussion board feed.
A spokesperson instructed CNET solely: “We take a look at a number of new merchandise publicly to see what folks discover fascinating and helpful to their experiences throughout our apps.”
I attempted Discussion board out for myself — first, downloading the app from the App Retailer on my iPhone after which opening the app. I related utilizing my Fb account, after which Discussion board built-in all of my teams — my common FB feed, Market, a Purchase Nothing group, and so forth. Within the app’s settings, you are in a position to handle your present teams, uncover new ones or create a brand new one from scratch.
On the high of the feed, Discussion board gave me some tips to get began:
- Ask something: Get solutions, recommendation and information from throughout teams.
- Curate your feed: Inform us what you care about and your feed will comply with.
- Every little thing is in sync: Your teams and exercise are mirrored on Fb too, so you should use Discussion board with out lacking a factor.
I checked out my Discussion board feed. There have been posts in regards to the 49ers and Warriors (my favourite groups), gadgets on the market, posts from buddies on my common Fb. It took a little bit of time to reorient myself to having all these teams clustered collectively in a single feed, but it surely did reduce out a whole lot of extraneous posts that I did not need or want.
