Meta has launched seven apps in 2026, spanning photo sharing, Facebook communities, marketplace selling, AI bedtime stories and social coding. The rollout reflects the company’s effort to find its next Facebook- or Instagram-scale product in the AI era. Unlike startups, Meta can promote new apps to billions of people already using its platforms.
On Meta’s July earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said AI is helping teams develop products faster. He expects launching apps to become easier, allowing the company to test more ideas and use its recommendation systems to put them in front of users who may be interested. Threads offers a recent example of that approach.
Meta’s seven app launches in 2026
Meta released Instants globally in May. The standalone app, spun out of Instagram, offers a Snapchat-like experience for sharing content. In August, the company launched Pocket, a social coding app, and began testing Storytime, an AI-powered bedtime-story app, in select markets.
Meta has also recently introduced three apps for Facebook users: Forum for communities, Seller for transactions on Facebook Marketplace, and Creator Studio for Facebook creators. Amy Wu Martin, an investor at Menlo Ventures, said Meta continues to experiment with new products.
The push is not the company’s first concentrated effort to test new ideas. Facebook established Creative Labs in the 2010s and launched a range of apps. In 2019, Meta formed its New Product Experimentation team to test and release products in areas including live streaming, social music and apps for couples. Some were later shut down. The team’s role diminished after the large-scale layoffs of late 2022; Meta is now stepping up product experimentation again.
Threads offers a model for distribution
Threads is one of the few Meta apps in recent years to achieve substantial growth. Launched in 2023 as a competitor to X, formerly Twitter, it had more than 500 million monthly active users by July, Zuckerberg said, describing it as the fastest-growing conversation app. The platform began introducing ads earlier this year.
AI has widened the scope for consumer-app experiments, but Martin said the field has yet to produce many clear winners. Meta’s scale, resources and existing user base could give it an advantage. Forrester chief analyst Kate Winick said Muse brings Meta back to familiar territory: packaging existing technology as a product that is more accessible to mainstream consumers.
Meta was not the first to explore AI personal assistants; startups including Instinct, Town and Poke are working on similar products. Muse nevertheless attracted significant attention at launch. One immediate advantage for Meta is the reach of its existing platforms. Zuckerberg said in July that 3.6 billion people use at least one Meta app every day.
The company can put new apps directly in front of existing users through services such as Instagram. It has previously used Instagram, followed by Facebook, to drive traffic to Threads. Winick said Meta is now putting company resources behind new products rather than simply releasing apps and leaving users to discover them on their own.
Meta adds standalone apps instead of building a super app
Including major services such as Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, users who download Meta’s main apps would have 14 of the company’s apps on their phones. Rather than combining all its features in one super app, Meta is continuing to build a portfolio of separate products.
That strategy contrasts with the company’s earlier exploration of the super-app model. Instagram gradually added video, photos, live streaming and shopping. China’s WeChat is a prominent example of a service that brings many functions together. Technology executives including X CEO Elon Musk and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella have also discussed building super apps.
But Martin said super apps have not become mainstream in Western markets, where users often prefer an app focused on a particular purpose. Meta’s latest offerings reflect that preference: people who want to share disappearing photos can use Instants, while Facebook Marketplace sellers who would rather avoid other content in the main Facebook app can use Seller.
Standalone apps may also give Meta room to explore subscriptions and product bundles. Winick described the strategy as building an ecosystem of products rather than packing every service into one large app. Whether the new apps retain users remains to be seen; for now, Meta is using lessons from Threads and the reach of its existing platforms to keep testing new ideas.