San Francisco, Jun 25 (IANS): Facebook has announced to soon launch Forecast, an iOS app that will create a community around predictions related to world events including the Covid-19 pandemic.

Members of the community can pose questions about the future, make predictions, and discuss and distill their knowledge into a single forecast. The app is currently in an invite-only beta version.

"We believe that a community built around predictions is not only a good way to surface crowdsourced wisdom, but may also help to encourage healthier online conversations across a broad range of topics," Facebook said in a statement late Wednesday.

Part of the Facebook's internal R&D group called NPE Team, the iOS app is initially allowing people from US and Canada to make predictions and participate in conversations.

However, all of the predictions and discussions will be publicly available on the Forecast website and shareable across platforms.

"We will invite people in the health, research and academic communities to make predictions about the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on the world around us," said Facebook.

Forecast is a place to ask questions and use in-app points to make predictions about the future.

All questions are submitted by the community and then moderated for clarity, using Facebook's Community Standards.

Forecasters can discuss the reasoning behind their predictions, visit profiles to see each user's predictions and opinions, and follow each other to get notified of new activities.

Forecasters can also see their own prediction track record over time and climb the leaderboard for individual topics.