Twitter is making a play for more users with a new slimmed-down browsing experience called “Twitter Lite,” which uses less data and loads faster for customers using slower connections.
“Twitter Lite is a great way for many people in emerging markets across Asia Pacific, Latin America and Africa to experience Twitter for the first time on their mobile devices,” the company said in a blog post.
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The stripped-down service can be access through mobile.twitter.com and all together, should take up less than 1MB on a smartphone, according to the company.
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The idea is to bring all of the key features of Twitter, including your timeline, notifications and direct messages to you, even on slow 2G networks, without sucking up precious data.
A “data saver” mode can also be accessed and turned on by clicking your profile photo. This will blur photos and videos, letting you decide which ones to load. The mode is estimated to save on data by as much as 70 percent.
With around 319 million users, the new, lighter version could potentially help the struggling service reach a wider audience. That could mean more advertising revenue for a company in search of new income.
The company is partnering with Vodafone in India as the cricket season begins, hoping that some of Vodafone’s 200 million subscribers in the country may want to give this Twitter thing a try.
