Facebook has launched Facebook Lite, a lightweight version of the Facebook Android app for developing markets.
The announcement should help solve the problem of Facebook being slow on weak Internet connections or expensive data plans in places like China and India.
"More than a billion people around the world access Facebook from a range of mobile devices on varying networks," said the company in a statement. "In many areas, networks can be slow and not able to support all the functionality found in Facebook for Android. Facebook Lite was built for these situations, giving people a reliable Facebook experience when bandwidth is at a minimum."
While the new app won't offer users data-intensive features like video streaming, it will help connect more Facebook users around the world, especially for those willing to deal with the slightly scaled down interface and the lower-resolution images.
Most of the changes in Facebook Lite are actually under the hood. While the official Facebook app takes up around 30 MB of storage, Facebook Lite takes up less than 1 MB, and keeps most of the core features of the original Facebook app.
The team created the app after doing research in Africa, India and Indonesia, determining that there were three things that needed to be fulfilled. The app needed to work on any Android phone, it needed to work fast on even 2G data connections, and it needed to use as little data as possible.
Of course, for those in the developed world, it might not seem like there is a need for a lighter version of the Facebook app. However, for those dealing with a slower data network, trying to interact on Facebook can be a struggle and often likely impossible.
"Roughly a year back, that's when we realized that our current Facebook experiences needed a lot more work, specifically in emerging markets and more specifically where networks are bad," said Vijay Shankar, Facebook Lite's product manager.
The app rolls out today in Asia. It will become available in parts of Latin America, Africa and Europe in the coming weeks.
Large tech companies are becoming increasingly interested in connecting the developing world to the Internet, with companies like Google and Facebook leading the pack. Both companies have launched projects aimed at giving people in developing countries free Internet, with Google launching Project Loon, which consists of weather balloons that project Wi-Fi to the people below, and Facebook doing a similar thing with drones.
Of course this will end up being beneficial for both of these companies, which stand to make billions from advertising in developing markets. It's really a win-win here, with people having Internet connections and being able to take part in the global market, and companies making money from advertising.
