The faster, more data-conservative version of the Facebook mobile app, Facebook Lite, now has over 100 million monthly active users.
This makes it the fastest-growing app created by the social media giant, reaching the milestone in under nine months.
Facebook Lite is a stripped-down app geared specifically for low-end Android devices and targets emerging markets.The app supports 56 languages and is most popular in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, and the Philippines.
The social media company first started testing the app in January last year and officially launched it in June 2015.
Facebook Lite is just 252Kb in size and was designed for 2G networks and areas with limited network connectivity.
App users can message friends, have group conversations, and share updates and photos. The app also includes push notifications and camera integration.
Gautam Roy, a Facebook software engineer, says the team had three goals in mind when designing the app:
1. Stay below the 1MB Android application package (APK) size limit.
2. Design client-server interaction to minimise data usage and work well on 2G networks.
3. Build an app that works on Android Gingerbread and on a 2009 year class device.
"Downloading a typical app with 20MB APK can take more than 30 minutes on a 2G network, and the download is likely to fail before completion, due to the flaky nature of the network," notes Roy.
"Restricting our APK size makes it easier for people to download it. This also means people have to use less data to upgrade the app."
A full technical explanation on how the team achieved these goals can be found here.
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