Facebook's Lite app for slow mobile connections has officially been launched for Android users in India and Philippines, reports TheNextWeb. The social networking major had started testing this app in January this year. At the time, this app was available only in Bangladesh, Nepal, South Africa, Nigeria, Sudan, Vietnam, Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka. The company claims that the app uses less data and is designed for 2G networks and areas with slow or unstable connections. Note that Facebook had earlier rolled out its ‘Facebook Lite’ website in 2009, specifically designed for low bandwidth usage in emerging markets. Facebook Lite features all standard Facebook functions, like push notifications, chat including group conversation, and sharing on updates and photos among others. At 435KB, it's literally a light app and will be perfect for some of the low-cost smartphones that have minimal internal memory. In comparison Facebook’s primary app, which doesn’t allow users to chat, is over 25MB in size and its companion messenger app is over 16MB in size. Over the past 12 months, Facebook, which claims to have 118 million monthly active users in India (as of March 2015) of which over 89% are on mobile, has been exploring various avenues of reaching a greater share of users on slow mobile connections. Missed calls initiative: In July last year, Facebook started testing a new ad unit, which allows users to place a missed call to an advertiser by clicking on an ad on their mobile phone. In the return call, users get access to additional content…
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