It’s only been ‘officially’ launched in the United States and India, but the ‘lite’ version of popular social media and networking site Facebook can also be accessed from the UK. The site is a fully functional but greatly stripped down version of Facebook with an emphasis on status updates, picture uploads and comments. It’s been developed to give greater access to the bandwidth heavy sites to developing countries that don’t necessarily have good internet connections.
Although the site was originally designed for American college students it has grown to be one of the largest social networking sites in the world, challenging MySpace for the overall worldwide crown. Over 70% of the active users on the site hail for outside the United States, and many of those come from developing countries in South East Asia, including a large Indian following.
Of course, even users in developed countries have to be mindful of bandwidth, even if only for their mobile devices or mobile broadband connections.
However, it seems unlikely that simply providing a low bandwidth and more accessible site is all Facebook are trying to do, as the lite version takes a lot of cues from rival Twitter.
Whatever the reasoning though, we’ve got to praise Facebook for this decision. One of the major appeals on Facebook when it was released was how simply and clutter free the design was compared to rival MySpace. Over time the amount of third party applications has grown to severely ‘clog up’ people who just want use Facebook to stay in touch with friends and family.
While Twitter might still be the most simple of all the big name networking sites, Facebook retains many of its important features in the lite versions, such as the ability to share and comment on friends’ pictures. It does however strip away the real time chat aspect, almost all applications and any notifications relating to them, including the multitude of quizzes, invites and more that litter the walls of many Facebook users.
Facebook Lite may not appeal to many of the younger generation using Facebook, but it will allow those who don’t wish to be flooded by applications as well as the older generation who are slowly starting to learn the appeal of social networking.
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