Remember Facebook Lite? The lightweight Facebook app for Android originally popped up on Google Play back in January, but at the time it only worked in a handful of countries. Now Facebook has given the app an official introduction and announced plans to expand its support.
Facebook Lite is less than 1MB in size (the latest version is 435k) and is meant for use on 2G networks. These features make the app quick to install and fast to load content like the News Feed, status updates, and notifications. Facebook says that Facebook Lite is now available in several Asian countries and that it will expand to areas in Africa, Europe, and Latin America in the coming weeks.
Obviously Facebook Lite doesn’t have quite the same look as the standard Facebook app, but that’s because it’s meant to be super lightweight. And while Facebook often gets some flak for releasing a lot of apps outside of its standard offering, I think that we can get behind Facebook Lite since its purpose is to help people stay connected to friends and family, even if they’ve got a less powerful device or slower network connection.