Facebook has launched the “lite” version of it Messenger chat app on Android devices in Kenya, Sri Lanka, Venezuela, Malaysia, and Tunisia, where many people are still using older phones with low memory and slower internet connections and are therefore unable to run the full-fledged application.
The new launch marks latest effort of the social networking giant to expand its reach in developing countries. A “Facebook Lite” is already available for people whose phones can’t run the full-featured Facebook. Facebook has also rolled out Free Basics service in selected countries, allowing users to access specific websites. The company says it wants to connect the “next billion” users in emerging markets, although it has also been criticized in countries like India for violating the principle of net neutrality.
The social networking giant did not reveal when “Messenger lite” would be launched in other countries or on Apple devices.
With Messenger Lite—the slimmed-down version of Messenger—people would be able to send photos, text, and links, and receive stickers, although they can’t do video calls with Messenger Lite. According to Facebook, the new app—with a size of under 10 MB—is easy to download and fast.
“With Messenger Lite, more people can stay in contact, regardless of network conditions or storage limitations on their Android devices,” Tom Mulcahy, Engineering Manager for Messenger Lite, wrote in a blog post.
“Messenger Lite was built to give people a great Messenger experience, no matter what technology they use or have access to.”
The Messenger had more than 1 billion active users in July, as revealed by Facebook. Facebook-owned WhatsApp had already reached the same milestone a few months back.
Success Story of Facebook
Facebook, headquartered in Menlo Park, California, U.S., is the largest social networking website in the world. The Facebook website was launched in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, along with fellow Harvard College students Andrew McCollum, Eduardo Saverin, Chris Hughes, and Dustin Moskovitz. Initially, the websites membership was limited to Harvard students, but it was later expanded to include higher education institutions in the Boston area, the Ivy League schools, and Stanford University. Since 2006, anyone aged 13 or above can register on the website.
By late 2007, there were 100,000 business pages on Facebook. These pages were created by companies to promote themselves and attract customers. On October 24, 2007, Microsoft revealed to have purchased a 1.6% share of Facebook for $240 million. Once year later, Facebook announced its plan to set up its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.
In July 2010, the company announced to have touched the milestone of 500 million users, making it the world’s largest online social network at the time. At that time, almost half of the Facebook users were using the site daily, for an average of 34 minutes (according to the company’s data).
According to SecondMarket Inc., Facebook’s value in November 2010 was $41 billion, making it the third largest American web company after Google and Amazon.
The initial public offering of Facebook was held in February 2012. Three months later, the company started selling stock to the public, and reached an original peak market capitalization of $104 billion. As of March 31, 2016, the social network had over 1.65 billion monthly active users, and it is now also the world’s most popular social networking site based on the number of active user accounts.
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