Although Facebook Lite – the bandwidth friendly verison of the social-networking site – didn’t work out and was closed down less than a year after launch, there’s a new ‘zero data’ version for the mobile that looks as though it will stick.
0.facebook.com is a text-only version of Facebook that incurs no network data charges for mobile web users by displaying only status updates, comments and messages – basic functionality that will keep many a teen happy and their parents sane.
“When using the mobile internet, people around the world face two main challenges – sometimes the experience is too slow to be fun and the cost of data plans and understanding them can be daunting. We have designed 0.facebook.com to help solve these two barriers and we hope that even more people will discover the mobile internet with Facebook as a result,” said Sid Murlidhar, program manager for Facebook Mobile.
For now, 0.facebook.com – which has all the functionality of m.facebook.com – is being launched in a select number of countries through specific mobile carriers. These countries are mostly developing economies but also include Finland, Austria, Denmark and Belgium.
Soon, however, mobile operator 3 will be bringing the service to the UK, with Telstra providing the zero-data service in Australia, and SFR providing it in France.
By Marie Boran
Photo: 0.facebook.com
