Meta is on an app-building spree as it hunts for its next Facebook moment

Meta is on an app rampage that extends far beyond its hit AI individual assistant, Muse.

The tech elephantine has released seven new apps so far in 2026. They range from getting rear to Meta's basics of sharing photos to evaluation AI use cases for mundane people.

It's all part of Meta's biggest project at hand correct now: Winning the competition to build the AI era's Facebook or Instagram.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has additionally credited AI alongside assisting the business quickly rotate new ideas into genuine products.

"AI is assisting our teams speed up merchandise development," he told investors during Meta's July earnings call. "I anticipate it to rotate into a lot easier to container new apps, so we're preparedness to build out additional ideas and use our advice systems to measure them to the group who volition discover them interesting, as we've done alongside Threads."

In May, Meta globally launched Instants, a Snapchat-like app that it spun out of Instagram. In August, it released Pocket, a vibe-coding social app, and began evaluation an AI-powered bedtime narrative app, Storytime, in several regions.

Meta additionally lately shipped three new Facebook apps: Forum (for groups), Seller (for Facebook Marketplace), and Creator Studio (for Facebook satisfied creators).

"They're continually motionless trying to innovate," Amy Wu Martin, an capitalist at Menlo Ventures, told Business Insider.

This isn't Meta's archetypal period throwing spaghetti at the partition and seeing what sticks. In the 2010s, Facebook had a Creative Labs squad that launched a fistful of apps. In 2019, the business announced its New Product Experimentation org, which tested, launched, and ultimately close downward multiple apps, from livestreaming to social apps for music and couples.

The NPE org was short-lived, however, and was deprioritized following Meta's important layoffs in delayed 2022. Now, the business is embracing new products again alongside open arms.

One big reason: the achievement of Threads.

Threads, Meta's bid to vie alongside X (formerly Twitter), was among the company's archetypal successful breakout apps added to its roster in latest years. Since its initiate in 2023, Meta has touted the social app's growth. In July, Zuckerberg shared that Threads had surpassed 500 myriad monthly energetic users, "making it the fastest-growing conversation app ever." The app welcomed promotion at the commencement of the year, too.

Meta's AI advantage

While AI has ushered in a motion of new ideas for consumer-facing apps, there haven't been "a lot of winners yet," Martin said.

That leaves Meta — alongside enormous resources compared to a scrappy startup — at an advantage.

Forrester chief expert Kate Winick stated that, alongside Muse, Meta is "going rear to its roots."

The business is "figuring out how to put a extremely accessible, extremely affable consumer-centric wrap about innovation that exists elsewhere," she added.

Meta didn't invent the AI individual aide — startups akin Instinct, Town, or Poke have stirred industry buzz — but the business made many of noise alongside Muse's rollout.

The biggest leg up Meta has for Muse, as fine as for any app it's pushing, is the billions of users already in its ecosystem. In July, Zuckerberg stated that 3.6 milliard group use "at smallest one of our apps all day."

When Meta launches an app, it can immediately advance it to its existing users.

Have you opened Instagram in the final few weeks? If you have, likelihood are you've seen an promotion from Meta suggesting you try out Muse.

Meta employed that identical scheme to chimney Instagram and, eventually, Facebook users over to Threads.

Launching an app into the void no longer cuts it. To remain out in the noise, Meta needs to spill gas on the flame. The business seems to be learning a instruction from its former app flops by "putting the complete power of the company" rearward pushing its newest and latest, Winick said.

Tempering the excellent app dream

If you download all of Meta's important apps — in supplement to the Holy Trinity of Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp — that leaves you alongside 14 Meta-owned apps.

Move all those apps to one iPhone page, and it takes up concerning fractional the screen.

Instead of consolidating everything into one elephantine excellent app, Meta is going for a sprawling approach.

Dreams of a excellent app aren't ancient history. Only a few years ago, Meta seemed to be morphing Instagram into a excellent app alongside video, photos, livestreaming, shopping, and more. Meanwhile, in China, WeChat dominates as the everything app. Tech executives from X's Elon Musk to Microsoft's Satya Nadella have shared their excellent app aspirations.

"In the Western markets at least, the excellent app has not been a form aspect that has really taken hold," Martin said. "People desire to use an app for a particular thing."

Meta seems to be giving that a shot.

Want to dispatch a disappearing photo to a friend, but not on Instagram DMs? Open Instants. Want to market a part of furnishings on Marketplace but don't desire to agreement alongside the distractions of the Facebook app? Open Seller.

This method could additionally assistance Meta as it pushes into subscriptions and looks for possible bundles.

"They're really creating an ecosystem" alternatively of one enormous app, Winick said. "And it's persuasive."