Twitter announced the launch of a 'lite' version of its mobile website, designed for users with slow mobile networks, limited storage or expensive internet services. The company said Twitter Lite minimizes data usage, loads quickly on slower connections, is resilient on unreliable mobile networks, and takes up less than 1MB on the device.
Optimized for speed, it launches up to 30 percent faster than the standard Twitter and offers quicker navigation as well, the company said. Twitter Lite includes the key features of Twitter— timeline, tweets, direct messages, trends, profiles, media uploads and notifications. On Chrome and other browsers for Android devices, users can also receive push notifications from their Twitter account.
The optional data saver mode further reduces the amount of mobile data used. In this mode, users see a preview of images and videos before choosing which ones to fully load. This can reduce data usage by up to 70 percent, according to the company.
Twitter is promoting the launch of the Lite site through a deal with Vodafone India to offer a specially curated timeline for the India Premier League cricket season. This special Twitter timeline will feature top tweets from cricket leagues, teams, players, and commentators to encourage Vodafone’s over 200 million subscribers to use Twitter Lite. Introduced customers can request a SMS with a link to the timeline and start receiving real-time alerts.
The new service from Twitter follows similar steps by companies such as Skype, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube to offer 'lite' versions of their apps for the growing Indian market. In addition to reducing the amount of data used for standard services, the apps often allow for previews and offline viewing or support.
