Facebook rolled out a lite version of the popular social networking app to tap emerging markets across the globe.
To get through communities with low budget and dwindling Internet connections, the lite variant is specifically designed for 2G networks. With fewer data, the new Android variant hopes to provide smartphone users with devices that have restricted bandwidth and low specs convenient access to the most used social media mobile app in the world.
"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," Product Manager for Facebook Lite Vijay Shankar said.
Tagged as Facebook Lite, this new alternative only weighs 1MB and would take less than a minute to download. Installing it would require minimum technical specifications and network capacity.
Stripped down to the essentials, the new version doesn't have all the advanced features Facebook has added in recent years. It will only run the staple features users always use, like Status Updates, Photos, Notifications, Messenger and News Feed.
In an effort to get every human being hooked in the Web, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg released the new software in digitally uncharted territories across the world.
"We're starting to roll out Facebook Lite across Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe, and it will be available in the Play store. We're going to keep working to serve the entire world, and we'll keep building tools for people in every community until we're all connected," Zuckerberg announced in his official Facebook account.
Forbes said that this move is just the beginning. Through exapnding its reach to the "bottom of the pyramid", Facebook might even achieve what capitalism has never done: augment developing economies across the world.
