According to reports we attained from Reuters, Micro-blogging social platform; Twitter Inc. launched a faster version of its mobile service dubbed; Twitter Lite on Wednesday aimed at people with infrequent connections or little data on their smartphone plans, hoping to pick up users in harder-to-reach emerging markets.
According to a preview that was shown to Reuters, the Lite version works through a web browser, therefore there isn’t a standalone app as yet, but its appearance and functionality are nearly identical to what app users experience.
Twitter now joins the likes of Facebook who released their standalone app; Facebook Lite in June 2015 recording 100 million monthly active users, less than nine months since the launch. Earlier this year had a great increment with over 200 million monthly active users. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, YouTube also unveiled a low-data mobile app designed for India, and Microsoft very owned Skype also launched a lite version of its app to Android users earlier this year in February.
Twitter lags behind those companies in building a user base. It had 319 million average monthly active users at the end of last year, up 4% year-over-year but still a fraction of Facebook’s 1.9 billion users, quotes Reuters.
A primary reason in some parts of the world is how much data its app and earlier website consumed, Keith Coleman, Twitter’s Vice President of product, said in an interview.
“We didn’t feel like we were reaching these other countries well enough, and this will allow us to do it faster, cheaper and with a better experience than we’ve had before,” he said.
The company estimates that, with several changes it is making to its mobile website, users will see their average data consumption on the browser version go down 40%. With an additional data-saving feature users can turn on, data consumption will drop some 70%t on average, said Patrick Traughber, Twitter’s product manager.
The reduction will come from differences such as initially displaying previews of pictures instead of full pictures.
Twitter Lite is still limited to US, however, other countries where the company said it expects Twitter Lite to be most useful include Indonesia, the Philippines, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico.
