Facebook's new Forum groups app, and Meta's stack of new AI subscription plans

Facebook has a brand-new standalone groups app called Forum, and reaction is split between excitement and refusal to engage with yet another Meta app.

Potentially useful features include an AI search across all groups and an AI-powered trending topic and content creation tool. For now, Forum is iOS-only and in limited rollout, with more countries and Android presumably to follow. Notably, the app currently carries no ads, and its feed shows only groups you have joined or run - making it a calmer experience than the main Facebook app.

Meanwhile, Meta announced new subscription plans - and, in typical fashion, both the announcement method and the tiers themselves have confused people. Two sets of rollouts are in play.

New consumer subscriptions for the big three apps:

Instagram Plus at $3.99/month

Facebook Plus at $3.99/month

WhatsApp Plus at $2.99/month

Subscribers get extras like profile customization, super reactions and story insights, with more features promised.

Meta is also beginning tests of subscriptions for businesses, creators and Meta AI users:

Meta One Plus at $7.99/month

Meta One Premium at $19.99/month, unlocking more capacity on higher-compute queries

Meta One Essential at $14.99/month, which includes the Verified badge

Meta One Advanced at $49.99/month, which gets you featured in the Facebook feed, higher placement in Facebook and Instagram search results, a bold "Follow" button on Reels, and automatic follow invitations sent to people who engage with your content

Early community reaction leans strongly against paying for more AI on Meta's platforms - many marketers say they are satisfied with their existing AI subscriptions elsewhere.