Facebook 'Lite' nears launch

by Dan Leahul, Brand Republic 12-Aug-09, 09:00

LONDON - Facebook looks to be launching a "Lite" version of its website after a number of users were sent invitations to beta test the service, in what appears to be a direct stab at rival Twitter.

The move follows Facebook's acquisition of FriendFeed yesterday, and the launch of its ramped up search function.

The company, in a statement, said: "We are currently testing a simplified alternative to Facebook.com that loads a specific set of features quickly and efficiently.

"Similar to the Facebook experience you get on your mobile phones, Facebook 'Lite' is a fast-loading, simplified version of Facebook that enables people to make comments, accept Friend requests, write on people's Walls, and look at photos and Status updates."

Including Facebook Lite, a major theme prevails -- real-time.

Over the past few months, Facebook has made subtle changes to its website, aimed at emulating the de facto champion of real-time, Twitter.

In March, it rolled out its real-time homepage, which in many ways looked like a cross between Twitter and FriendFeed.

From this, it began allowing third party developers to create applications from its news feed, something Twitter has benefited from immensely, especially with its desktop clients Seesmic and Tweetdeck, which recently integrated Facebook into its service.

In June it granted users full control over their privacy limitations, which many of taken advantage of, allowing status updates to be broadcast to everywhere on the web, mimicking the public nature behind Twitter.

Its new search function, rolled out yesterday, allows users to search Facebook as they would Twitter, to find trending topics as they happen.

A screengrab of Facebook Lite taken this morning shares similarities with Twitter users' profile pages, with a streaming conversation down the centre, with options to post pictures or videos.

Facebook said the beta test invitations were sent out by mistake, but Facebook Lite should be officially launched soon.

The words "Facebook Lite" is presently topping Twitter's trending topics list.

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Comments

Dan Williamson - 12/08/2009

UsingGoogle's new sandbox / search engine release yesterday I saw many more 'real-time' results from Twitter and the like. If this delivers what it promises, it looks like Google's recently 'Show options' tab will reveal even more up to date results...

guy blaskey - 12/08/2009

Could this be a way for facebook to finally make some money... get 'lite' for free, pay to upgrade to the full version??? This may not seem right now, but think back on this in a year or 2

Ed Stivala - 15/08/2009

I think that sounds like a good plan Guy. Why would you think that it "may not seem right"? Do you not think that it is about time consumers woke up and realized that the services they enjoy consuming actually cost someone somewhere money to provide? Data centers, server farms and web applications don't occur organically in Nature, someone had to build them and others maintain them. Those people need paying... funny old world! Just think how great it would be if it marked the end of the "free if its on the web" consumer gravy train.