Twitter's Data-Friendly 'Twitter Lite' is Now Available in More Regions
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Loading... - Chimlin Bui
- 14 Aug 2021
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Twitter’s expanding the availability of its data-friendly ‘Lite’ version to 21 more markets, including Argentina, Indonesia, Turkey - and importantly, India.
As explained by Twitter:
“Every day, millions of people around the world use Twitter to see what’s happening. However, there are several barriers to using Twitter, including slow mobile networks, expensive data plans, or lack of space on mobile devices. When building new products, we want to make sure what we create allows people to have the best possible experience, no matter where they are.”
Several social apps have released slim-lined ‘lite’ versions for such purpose, helping them to reach more users in even more regions.
This is particularly important in Twitter’s case as, for one, it needs to expand its user base, but also, the compact messaging of Twitter makes it ideal for such purpose.
Twitter is also now seeing significantly more user and revenue growth outside North America, as highlighted in its most recent earnings report.
And as noted, India is a key focus here. While it’s the second most populous nation in the world - at 1.3 billion people – there are also significant connectivity limitations in the region, with only 26% of the population currently able to access to the internet. That figure is steadily rising, though as more users come online, they're generally doing so in areas with poor connection strength, so they need more data and network-friendly options.
Catering to this will enable apps to boost usage - both Facebook and Google are also focused on boosting connection with Indian users.
In addition to the expansion, Twitter has also added a couple of new tools to Twitter Lite. From today, Lite will also support push notifications, enabling users to keep up with happening events, while threaded Tweets are also being made available in the Lite version.
While it won’t make a heap of difference to regular platform users, adding in more data-friendly options is a key step, and may, eventually, enable broader connection, helping businesses expand their reach into new markets.
Right now, that may not mean much to you, but with Facebook, in particular, investigating new potential payment options (like Blockchain), and building greater international reach, such tools may become very important, very soon.
