By GIFT NDOLWANE
JOHANNESBURG  – FACEBOOK is rolling out its Lite offering to more countries following a positive uptake.
The company expressed excitement announcing more than 200 million people now use Facebook Lite monthly.
“Since people enjoy using FB Lite, we will continue rolling it out to other countries around the world,” Facebook stated.
In August 2009, Facebook announced the rollout of a “lite” version of the site, optimised for users on slower or intermittent Internet connections.
Facebook Lite offered fewer services, excluded most third-party applications and required less bandwidth.
A beta version of the slimmed-down interface was released first to invited testers before a broader rollout across users in the United States, Canada, and India.
FB Lite was reintroduced in 2015 an app with a total size of less than 1MB, primarily focusing markets where internet access is slow or limited. It is compatible with Android 2.2 devices or higher.
Facebook said it had made a lot of improvements over the past year, including performance, look and feel.
“When we rolled out FB Lite for a handful of countries in 2015, people started using it, and we’re excited about the growth we’ve had. We understand that a lot of the features of FB Lite are a good fit for emerging markets, but we’ve seen interest in other countries as well -specifically when people want a lightweight, simple experience.”
– Guardian