‘Facebook Lite' set for mobile launch

A MOVE likely to present significant mobile marketing opportunities is in the offing, as Facebook is currently testing a simplified service, dubbed Facebook Lite.

The social networking website is currently testing the new version of its service, which it is hoped will be used on mobiles in territories where broadband is not easily accessible.

The potential marketing opportunity is huge, as Facebook is the sixth most visited website on the planet and has extensive data on its 250 million users globally. Anecdotal examples of the power of Facebook’s marketing potential include the Guesthouse in England’s Lake District that had an adword campaign on the term “scrabble night”, as one night a week a group of locals attended to play the word quiz. The Guesthouse’s adwords campaign ended up being run on scrabulous pages (the online scrabble game played by Facebook users) and the outcome was that they were overwhelmed with enquiries and bookings.

Trials of the Facebook Lite service are taking place in India, with plans to roll out the social media service in China. Between these two countries account for half the world’s population and the proposed service could work very inclusively there as it is ideal for narrowband internet connections.

A statement from Facebook said: "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."

Facebook announced earlier this week that it has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, the service for sharing online.

“Since I first tried FriendFeed, I’ve admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. "As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use."

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