The mystery of Facebook Lite
August 12, 2009 at 5:58 am by Wayne GarciaLast night some Facebook users were invited to be part of a beta test for Facebook Lite (the link now bounces you not to Lite but to regular Facebook), but they soon found that the invitation was premature: Facebook pulled the trigger on too many beta testers, only to shut down the link.
So, what is Facebook Lite?
Depends on who you ask. Tech Crunch reports that it looks much like Twitter or FriendFeed:
Okay, while it seems that most of the users who are getting this message now are not seeing much different, earlier this week, it looks like a very select few may have gotten a sneak peak at Facebook Lite. According to their tweets on it, it appears to be a more Twitter-like. One user notes that it, “looks like a simplified version of twitter with comments enabled. On 2nd thought, it looks like simplified FriendFeed.”
That is of course very interesting since Facebook just bought FriendFeed for around $50 million yesterday.
Tech Crunch features this screen capture of Facebook Lite.
The Washington Post, however, says it ain’t Twitter-esque or FriendFeed-like:
But in reality, Facebook Lite has nothing to do with Twitter or FriendFeed ? at least, not right now. Instead, it was designed to be used in parts of the world where broadband speeds vary and can be expensive, we’re being told by Facebook. Given that the initial testing of it has taken place in India over the past several days, this makes sense.
Think about how slow Facebook is to load at times on some broadband connections here in the U.S., and just imagine what that much be like on connections that are several times slower. And then also consider that all of Facebook’s datacenters are here in the U.S. So for the data to get around the world, it creates an even longer natural load time. So Facebook is stripping the site back and allowing Facebook Lite to be a site where new users can quickly write on friend’s walls, send messages and build their social network. The basics.
As we said, it’s testing in India right now, but the plan is for Facebook Lite to hit places like Russia and China as well, we’re hearing.
