The application release trend of Meta has far surpassed that of its popular AI personal assistant Muse.

As of 2026, this tech giant has launched 7 new applications, ranging from returning to the basic function of "sharing photos" from the early days of Meta to testing AI use cases for ordinary users.

All of this falls under the current most important task of Meta: to win the competition for "the next Facebook or Instagram" in the AI era.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also attributes AI to the company's ability to transform new ideas into real products more quickly.

“AI is helping our team to accelerate product development,” he said to investors during Meta’s July financial report conference call, “I expect that launching new applications will become much easier, so we plan to expand on more ideas and utilize our recommendation system to push them to those who will find them interesting, just as we did with Threads.”

Meta has recently also launched 3 new Facebook applications: Forum (for groups), Seller (for Facebook Marketplace), and Creator Studio (for Facebook content creators).

Menlo Ventures Investors Amy Wu Martin say to Business Insider: "They have been constantly trying to innovate."

This isn't the first time that Meta has "thrown spaghetti against a wall to see what sticks." In the 2010s, Facebook had a team that launched several applications. In 2019, the company announced the establishment of an organization called New Product Experimentation ( NPE ), which tested, launched, and eventually shut down multiple applications, covering live streaming as well as social apps targeting music lovers and couples.

However, the NPE organization did not last long; it was downgraded after a large-scale layoff by Meta at the end of 2022. Now, the company is once again open arms to embrace new products.

In recent years, one of the more successful breakthrough applications under Meta is Threads, which represents its attempt to compete with X (formerly known as Twitter). Since its launch in 2023, Meta has been emphasizing the growth of this social application. In July, Zuckerberg stated that Threads has surpassed 500 million monthly active users, "becoming the fastest-growing chat application of all time." This application also began accepting advertisements at the beginning of this year.

Meta's AI Advantages

Although AI has brought a wave of new application ideas for consumers, Martin says that there are not yet "many winners" at present.

This gives Meta – which, compared to startups with limited resources, possesses substantial resources – an advantage.

Forrester Chief Analyst Kate Winick stated that with the help of Muse, Meta is "returning to its roots".

She added that the company is "trying to put a very user-friendly and consumer-oriented packaging over technologies that already exist elsewhere."

Meta did not invent the AI personal assistant – startups such as Instinct, Town, or Poke also attracted attention in the industry – but the launch of Muse drew a great deal of attention to Meta.

The greatest advantage of Meta over Muse and any applications it drives is its existing billions of users within its ecosystem. Zuckerberg stated in July that at least 3.6 billion people use "at least one of our applications" every day.

Simply launching an app into a blank market is no longer enough nowadays. To stand out in the noise, Meta needs to add fuel to the fire. Winick says that the company seems to be learning from past app failures and is making every effort to push its latest and most important products forward.

Cooling down the hype for super apps

If you download all the main applications of Meta, plus the three core applications Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, then you will have a total of 14 applications under the Meta brand.

If you put all these applications on one page, iPhone, they will almost take up half of the screen.

Meta did not integrate everything into a single giant super-app; instead, they chose a more decentralized approach.

The dream of super apps is not considered outdated. Just a few years ago, Meta seemed to be working on transforming Instagram into a super app that integrated functions such as video, photos, live streaming, and shopping. Meanwhile, in China, WeChat dominated as the "all-in-one app." Tech executives from Elon Musk of X to Satya Nadella of Microsoft have expressed their longing for super apps.

Martin said, "At least in the Western market, super apps have not truly become a widely accepted form. People hope to use one app to do a specific task."

Meta seems to be trying that out.

Want to send a disappearing photo to a friend without using Instagram for private messages? Open Instants. Want to sell a piece of furniture on Marketplace without having your attention distracted by other content within the Facebook app? Open Seller.

This approach may also help Meta to promote its subscription business and explore potential bundled sales solutions.

Winick said, "What they're actually doing is creating an ecosystem, rather than a giant application. This strategy is quite persuasive."