Facebook Lite: An assault to Twitter?

Facebook, the world's biggest social networking site has launched a slimmed-down version of Facebook called “Facebook Lite” for people with slow internet connections. The new site will be faster and easy to work as it features fewer services than the main website.
According to the company, the “Lite” version is targeted to the audiences present in various developing countries, where bandwidth constraints make the current version too slow or unable to use. Currently, the application will be available in India and US.
The company announced that about 70% of its 300 million users are from outside America. Various countries from Southeast Asia and Europe have been witnessing a massive spurt in growth where fast internet connections are more common. Therefore, the company has been working on the ‘Lite’ site since August for the rest of the world that have slow net speed.

'Twitter-like' features
According to various analysts, the new version is similar to Twitter and Friendfeed, where users can send short messages or ‘tweets’ to other people. In the new Facebook Lite, users are now limited to write on their wall, post photos and videos, view events and browse other people's profiles. The new site has also sacrificed some of key features of original Facebook like special boxes, chat systems, links to applications and notifications.

Is ‘Lite’ an assault on Twitter?
It is speculated that the new Facebook’s site is a direct assault on increasing popularity of Twitter. After Myspace, Twitter is emerging as the main competitor for Facebook. In view of leading the competition, Facebook has constantly innovated and made certain improvements like inclusion of public profiles, profile fans, public status updates and real-time search on its main website. The simplicity of Twitter is tagged as the main reason for its popularity and Facebook is all set to rival that with its new "Lite" version.

Positive aspects:
1.      The new website has no application similar to the main site, hence people who do not want to see people’s annoying quiz results and their latest scores on Bejeweled, they can focus directly on their updates.
2.      Now, the new application can be easily used on various Smartphones.
3.      It reminds the older and simpler versions of Facebook that was only related to friends and family updates.
4.      There is a “View Top Stories” link so user can see which of their friend’s posts are getting the most comments/likes.

Few negatives
1.      It does not have a chat feature, which is must for any social networking site.
2.      The new Lite version allows user to view only two to three photographs at a time on one page, which is sometime very annoying.
3.      It can be called just an effort to become more like Twitter.
4.      The link for any quiz participation and game is missing in this new version.

Conclusion
The new Facebook Lite is reportedly created for users in countries such as China and India, where internet connections are not always the fastest or the most reliable. Further, it can be used on various Smartphones as well. But, it is certain that with a user base of more than 300 million, Facebook Lite's impact could be rather heavy on its competitors.