Facebook Lite a Direct Competition to Twitter?

August 12, 2009 | Willis Wee

TechCrunch and Mashable are fast to release the news!

Facebook Lite beta is now underway. It is supposedly a lighter and faster version of Facebook. To put it simply, one might say that Lite is used as a direct challenge against Twitter by being like Twitter.

With its recent FriendFeed acquisition and launch of real time search function and now Facebook Lite, it is no doubt that Facebook has all these planned out way ahead of time. What could Facebook possibly come out with next?

Only a few thousand users are selected to test out Facebook’s new interface. Clearly I’m not one of the lucky lot (sigh). Similar to the pre iPhone launch, Facebook Lite has created intense excitement across the Twitter and Facebook world.

FB Lite FB

The word “Lite” seems to spell trouble for Twitter. And indeed, sources from TechCrunch has revealed that Facebook Lite is a little Twitter like.

My Bet: Facebook is all out to grab a share of the micro blogging world from Twitter.

What do you think?

Updates

Alright! I was entirely wrong about Facebook Lite’s agenda.

For now, Facebook Lite has got nothing to do with FriendFeed and Twitter. Lite as its name has suggested, is a strategy to reach out to users with lower connection speed. Particularly places like India, Russia and China.

TechCrunch explains:
“Think about how slow Facebook is to load at times on some broadband connections here in the U.S., and just imagine what that much be like on connections that are several times slower. And then also consider that all of Facebook’s datacenters are here in the U.S. So for the data to get around the world, it creates an even longer natural load time. So Facebook is stripping the site back and allowing Facebook Lite to be a site where new users can quickly write on friend’s walls, send messages and build their social network. The basics.”

Source: TechCrunch