If you've ever wanted to go on a social media diet, here's your chance. Starting this week, Facebook is making the slimmed-down Facebook Lite[1] app available to Android users in North America, Australia, and Western Europe for the first time.
Facebook first debuted the lightweight version of its main social networking app three years ago to better serve users in developing countries—specifically, people in the parts of the world where a mobile data connection is difficult to access, unreliable, or just painfully slow. The streamlined app is only 1.68 megabytes in size, and downloads as fast as your average cat GIF. It installs on almost any Android phone, and runs well on flaky, low-bandwidth data connections. Critically, it uses less data than big ol' regular Facebook; people who pay by the megabyte can use it to browse their News Feed without racking up crazy fees.
India and Indonesia were among the nations to get Facebook Lite at launch[2]. Since then, it's been made available in 100 countries across Asia, Latin America, Europe, and Africa.
Now, Facebook Lite lands in eight more countries—and some of them might even be your country. Facebook's adding the new regions because, well, crappy or expensive data connections turn out to be a universal malady. So now we, too, get to take advantage of Lite's data-saving magic—at least those of us with Android phones, since Facebook Lite isn't available on iOS. (Yet.)
It could take a while for the app to show up in your region's Play Store, but once you see it, you may wonder if it's for you. Here's what to expect if you go Lite.
Some Lite Prodding
The first thing you'll notice is that Lite...