Facebook’s fastest loading version became its fastest growing version on Wednesday. The company announced that Facebook Lite, the Android app meant for users from emerging markets finally hits 100 million monthly active users landmark.
The development comes just nine months after the inception of the service and makes Lite the fastest growing mobile app from the company. The service was introduced by the social website last June in order to increase the quality of experience for users in emerging markets who use low cost smartphones and are confined to slow Internet speeds and reception. The app is just 1 MB in size and is currently available in 150 countries.
Facebook Lite came to India in July, a month after its official release and has been one of the more popular apps from the Facebook pool because of the faster and swifter experience it provides.
According to the social giant, the app is currently the most popular in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico and the Philippines.
Facebook, as of lately has been constantly concentrating on the developing countries. Its Free Basics, for example (which was recently banned in India because TRAI believes that it violates net neutrality), was one of the company’s efforts to increase user experience in emerging markets.
The Facebook Lite app currently is fairly limited and seems to be like the social website’s rendition on a browser with all plugins turned off. But it gets the job done and provides the fastest and most subtle Facebook experience. The company has talked about future updates bringing in new features including support for video, multiple photo uploads, pinch-to-zoom for photos, emojis etc, but as of now, the app is almost as it was when it was first launched.
There have been talks about the app being ported to iOS but the social behemoth is yet to officially state the claim.
