According to foreign media outlet TechCrunch today (the 31st), Meta is using AI to dramatically shorten app development cycles and preparing to launch more new products.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed at the company’s second-quarter earnings call this week that several new apps are in development. Recently launched products include an app for Marketplace sellers, a Facebook Groups app, a game app created through “vibe coding,” an Instagram photo app, and an AI bedtime story experiment.
For years, Meta has hoped to build new standalone social apps beyond its core platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, but nearly all of its previous attempts failed. Meta believes that large language models can significantly improve software development efficiency, enabling teams to launch products and validate new ideas more quickly.
Zuckerberg said:
AI is helping teams accelerate product development, and I’m very excited. Earlier this year, we launched Instagram Instants. More recently, we released the standalone Groups app Forum and the standalone Marketplace app Seller. It will be much easier to launch new apps in the future, so we are preparing to try more ideas and then use recommendation systems to drive app growth.
AI is improving Meta’s core business, not only making the content provided by its apps more relevant to users, but also delivering better results for business customers. Meta has already begun launching more innovative products, and many more will be available to the public soon.
Meta CFO Susan Li noted that large language models are becoming increasingly effective at improving content ranking and recommendation performance. First, models can truly understand the topics of content and generate higher-quality training data, making existing recommendation systems more intelligent. Second, AI agents can assess content quality, identify popular trends, and test ranking adjustments, thereby accelerating engineering development.
Investors did not press Meta further on which new apps it is preparing, instead focusing their attention on AI investment and Meta’s continually expanding enterprise business. Zuckerberg responded that new consumer products are coming soon, and the public will soon see the next batch of apps.
Meta has made repeated attempts to incubate new apps in the past. When Meta was still using the Facebook name, it established an internal incubator called Creative Labs specifically to test ideas for new social products.
Creative Labs successively launched the photo-sharing app Slingshot, the anonymous chat app Rooms, Paper, a competitor to Flipboard, the photo-sharing app Moments, and the collaborative video app Riff. Unable to attract enough users, Creative Labs ended the experiment in 2015, and all of the apps were eventually shut down.
After entering the 2020s, Meta resumed its efforts through the internal R&D team NPE Team. NPE Team tested products including the chat app Bump, the social music app Aux, the task app Move, the dating app Spark, the calling app CatchUp, the small magazine creation app E.gg, the events app Venue, the creator Q&A app Hotline, the Cameo competitor Super, the couples app Tuned, and the music app BARS.
The second round of attempts likewise failed to produce a hit product, and these apps met the same fate: they were all cut.