Facebook has been pretty busy lately -- not only did it see its Facebook Lite breach the 200 millionth mark in terms of users, it also has taken the opportunity to deploy the offline mode for Instagram on Android powered mobile devices. Very recently, the biggest social media platform in the planet has decided to further deploy its Messenger Lite service to more than a hundred countries across the globe, including the Netherlands, Germany, Turkey, Vietnam, Nigeria, Peru, and Japan. The platform though is not yet rolling out to countries such as the Philippines, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China, Cuba, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Sudan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and North Korea. The official announcement was made by none other than the head of Facebook’s Messenger David Marcus.
For those still not familiar with Messenger Lite, it is essentially a simpler version of Facebook’s Messenger chat messaging platform. As such, it comes with the usual features like messaging, image and link sharing, and even stickers. Messenger Lite, however, lacks the more advanced features of Messenger, like camera effects, Messenger Day, and the outside developer app platform.
Despite its more basic structure, Messenger Lite does offer some advantages. For one, it is designed to be quickly downloaded, with a far more manageable file size, which should come in handy for mobile devices with less advanced specifications. And because it does not come with data intensive functionalities, it can work on 2G networks. Moreover, it can function offline and then transmits messages when the user’s connection is restored. More importantly, Messenger Lite can work on nearly any Android running smartphone, even devices powered by the ancient Gingerbread operating system.
Facebook’s Messenger has attracted a lot of users in the last few years (1.2 billion to be exact), but not many people realize that most of those users are based outside America. Mark Zuckerberg’s team has really done a great job of exponentially expanding Messenger’s capabilities, and there is a strategic reason for that. After all, if users stick to using Messenger, they are more likely to be using mobile apps belonging to Facebook’s brand.
It was back in 2015 when Facebook first introduced Facebook Lite, a special edition of the Facebook app that is designed specifically for 2G networks and targeted to countries with limited connectivity. Facebook also has Free Basics Initiative, which basically lets users gain access to mobile data in exchange for receiving ads.
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https://www.wirefly.com/blog/news/facebook-rolls-out-messenger-lite-more-100-countries