Meta is, by and large, a company built on other companies’ ideas. It has almost perfected the strategy: wait for a new platform or social mechanic to take off, then either buy or clone it, put it next to Meta’s unmatched user base and advertising engine, and watch the money pile up.
So what’s the next big thing? Turning everything into gambling. Or more precisely, prediction markets. Meta is reportedly building a Polymarket competitor — a prediction market app that would bring betting on elections, economic indicators, and cultural events directly into the Facebook ecosystem.
It fits Meta’s playbook perfectly. Polymarket and Kalshi have proven there’s real money in event-driven prediction markets. Meta doesn’t need to invent the concept — it just needs to put its scale behind it. With billions of users and the world’s most sophisticated advertising engine, it could turn prediction markets into a mainstream feature the same way it turned Stories into a daily habit.
The timing is interesting for other reasons too. Meta is in the middle of an onslaught of other news this week: Instagram’s TV app coming to Samsung, new smart glasses, WhatsApp’s Cathcart stepping down, the pause of an employee tracking tool after an internal leak, and a Facebook creator studio AI relaunch. Meanwhile, morale problems reportedly keep growing inside the company.
Nilay Patel discussed all of this on The Vergecast this week from Cannes Lions, where Meta’s advertising prowess is on full display — and yet it also feels like a company in crisis. A prediction market app won’t fix that. But it might make Meta a lot of money while the rest sorts itself out.
