Six months ago, Facebook (Nasdaq: Stock, FB) decided to test Facebook Lite, a new version of Facebook stripped down of all the bells and whistles. Today, Mark Zuckerberg announced the launch of the app, built to be faster, more reliable and very data efficient, for Android phones around the world.

The Facebook Lite app is less than 1-MB (435K to be precise) in size and takes just seconds to download. Wait a minute – what about iOS? Bad luck Apple iPhone users, if you can afford an iPhone, chances are you can also afford expensive and better network offerings (*grin*). So, if you want to use the app, go get an Android phone.

 

Facebook Lite team, headed by Vijay Shankar, had began testing the app in Africa and Southeast Asia as early as January this year. With four stars and 50,000 reviews for the app on Google Play app store, Facebook believes the time is today to release it to the world, officially.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg was notorious for his ambition to expand access to the internet to every corner of the globe, via his initiative known as Internet.org. Among others, projects include developing drone and satellite technology that may eventually bring the internet to places that don’t have it at all.

 

Now, with the release of Facebook Lite, users from developing countries can start toying with the social media app, which otherwise would require 30-MB using a bloated official Facebook app. Facebook Lite app includes the News Feed, status updates, photos, notifications and other features familiar to users of the social network.

For now, Facebook Lite is rolling out in countries across Asia and will be arriving in parts of Latin America, Africa and Europe over the next couple of weeks. As strange as it may sound, this latest app would come in handy as well to developed countries such as U.S. and UK especially in densely populated cities and rural areas with weak signal.

 

Interestingly, Facebook Lite was built after extensive research and tests done in Africa, India and Indonesia. The app was designed particularly to work on any Android phone, regardless of storage space, RAM and CPU. In fact, while testing a mature version of Facebook Lite this January, Facebook had “secretly” dumped the “first version” in Bangladesh, Nepal, Sudan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Zimbabwe and Nigeria.

So, if your main purpose is merely to make calls, texting and connect to social media using Facebook, you can do so with super cheap Android smartphone, if you don’t mind the low resolution that Facebook Lite offers. Didn’t we tell you not to throw your cheapo Android phone away (*sigh*)?

 

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June 5th, 2015 by financetwitter

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