Facebook Lite no lightweight, tops 100m user mark

After amassing 100 million active users within nine months, Facebook Lite is now the fastest growing version of the world’s most popular social network.

The social media giant announced on March 9, 2016, that Facebook Lite, a version of Facebook for Android which consumes less data and resources, topped 100 million active monthly users last Wednesday.

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Gautam Roy, a software engineer for Facebook, attributed the success of the app to its low system requirements and compatibility with older devices.

“With Facebook Lite, our goal is to provide the best possible Facebook experience to everyone, no matter their device or connection,” Roy said.

According to Roy, the reported figures signified another milestone for the social network.

“Today we’re excited to share that the app has hit 100 million monthly active users,” he said. “It’s the fastest-growing version of Facebook to reach 100 million users in under nine months.”

The app was built with the emerging market in mind, enabling Facebook to increase their already considerable reach to an audience of almost 1.6 billion people.

The Philippines is among the top five countries which makes extensive use of the app, alongside Brazil, India, Indonesia and Mexico.
Roy explained the ideas they came up with to deliver a lighter, more efficient version of the app without sacrificing certain features.

“It has an APK (Android Application Package) that is less than 1 MB in size, meaning people can download it in seconds on slow connections,” he said.

The app is designed to let remote servers do most of the “heavy lifting” for it, enabling it to retain a smaller file size and use less data.

Roy also stated that their design choices helped the app achieve “best-in-class performance metrics on login, start-up time, pull-to-refresh, and image-loading times on low-bandwidth intermittent networks.”

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Facebook Lite is confirmed to be supported in 56 languages.