Facebook Groups have long been one of the quieter corners of Facebook, where people gather around everything from specific hobbies and travel destinations to food, technology, parenting and countless other niche interests. Now, Meta is giving those communities their own dedicated home with Forum, a new app designed specifically for people who want to spend more time in Groups.

Meta says Forum is built to make it easier to keep up with existing groups, discover new communities and find useful advice from other members. The company began testing the app in May and is now expanding the experience with several new features aimed at making group conversations easier to explore.

Forum syncs with the Facebook Groups people already belong to, bringing those communities together in a dedicated app rather than making users navigate through the broader Facebook experience. It also lets people discover public groups they haven’t joined yet, giving the app a more focused approach to community browsing.

For now, Forum is available to download in the US on iOS and Android. Users sign in with their existing Facebook accounts to access their groups and discover new ones.

Forum puts AI in the middle of group conversations

One of the more interesting parts of Forum is Ask, an AI-powered feature designed to help people find useful information buried inside Facebook Groups.

Rather than requiring users to search through pages of posts and comments themselves, Ask can surface existing conversations and highlight information from group members. The feature can draw from groups a person already belongs to as well as public groups they haven’t joined, potentially turning years of accumulated community discussions into a searchable source of firsthand experiences.

Meta is now testing a couple of new capabilities for Ask. One allows it to pull together recommendations when someone is comparing options, such as choosing running shoes, picking a gift or deciding what to read. Another uses a person’s recent searches to suggest follow-up questions, making it easier to continue exploring a topic instead of starting from scratch each time.

That approach is notable because the answers aren’t presented as coming solely from an AI model. The underlying material comes from conversations people have had inside Facebook Groups, allowing users to jump from an Ask result directly into the relevant group discussion.

Finding niche communities gets easier

Forum is also getting a new way to browse conversations by interest.

Meta is testing topic labels on posts, with examples such as Solo Travel and Korean Food. Tapping one of these labels can lead users to more conversations around the same subject, making it easier to move from one interesting post to a broader collection of related discussions.

It is a small change, but it fits the broader purpose of Forum: making Facebook Groups feel more like a destination for specific interests rather than something users have to stumble across while scrolling through the main Facebook feed.

That could be particularly useful for people who use Groups as a source of recommendations and practical knowledge. A person researching a trip, looking for advice about a hobby or trying to choose between products may be able to move from a single conversation into an entire network of communities focused on that subject.

Meta is changing how it recognizes helpful members

Forum is also introducing a new way to recognize people who consistently contribute useful information to Groups.

Meta is testing a new role for what it calls top community voices. It replaces the company’s previous contributor badges and group expert role and is intended to recognize members based on the quality and usefulness of their contributions.

Members can earn the role by doing things such as answering questions, sharing firsthand experiences, providing practical tips and recommendations, or starting conversations that bring people together. Those who receive it get a new badge along with benefits that include faster post publishing.

Group admins can directly identify and grant the role to members, while Meta will also nominate potential candidates to help admins find people who are making valuable contributions. Members are notified when they receive the role and can remove themselves from it if they choose.

The new recognition system is being tested on Forum in the US, while Meta says it is also rolling out on Facebook globally.

Forum is another sign that Meta is building more focused apps

Forum is part of a broader experiment at Meta with purpose-built apps for specific parts of its social platforms. Instead of putting every feature into the main Facebook app, Meta has increasingly explored dedicated experiences for people who spend most of their time doing a particular activity.

That makes Forum an interesting experiment for Facebook Groups. Groups already contain enormous amounts of niche knowledge and community discussion, but much of that information can be difficult to find unless someone knows exactly where to look.

By combining a dedicated Groups interface, AI-assisted search and recommendations, and topic-based discovery, Meta is effectively trying to make that community knowledge easier to navigate.

Forum is still a work in progress, though. Meta describes several of its features as tests, and the app is currently available in the US. The company says it plans to share more about the tools it is developing for group admins in the coming weeks.

For Facebook Groups users, the idea is straightforward: spend less time digging through Facebook and more time actually finding the people, conversations and advice relevant to a particular interest. Whether Forum becomes a major standalone destination will depend on how well Meta can turn that enormous collection of existing communities into something that feels easier — rather than simply another Facebook app to check.