Not everyone on this Earth lives has powerful phones and reliable internet connection. Billions are still living in places where the internet isn't yet a thing.
"Lite" apps are literally Facebook's approach of creating "light" apps, designed for phones with limited specifications and for users living in regions with poor connectivity. It has long been the social media's approach to reach more users, wherever they are, whatever the cost.
And this time, it has launched 'Instagram Lite' to 170 countries across the globe.
The app that was built by the collaboration of Facebook’s Tel Aviv-based team and the company's New York-based team, is only 2MB in size.
In a world where apps are measured in tens to hundreds of megabytes and even gigabytes, having one that is a fraction smaller is certainly a feat.
This Instagram Lite app debuted in India in December of 2020, before Facebook decided to released it globally.
The team across the NYC and Tel Aviv offices dealt with challenges like device fragmentation, data plan limitations and user behavior. We're excited to bring this new version with better speed and performance to people everywhere, many of whom are first-time internet users.
— Vishal Shah (@vishalshahis) March 10, 2021
According to Facebook in an announcement:
To accomplish this feat, the Facebook team squeezed pretty much of Instagram's functionalities through tweaks and by reducing much of its size.
With the main Instagram app is around 30MB, the Lite app is squeezed to just less than a tenth of that, with the team removing AR-based stickers and effects. The team also removed some transition animations to decrease the load time of Stories and Feed.
The team also optimized the app using existing tools that were utilized to build Facebook Lite, such as SizeBot to keep the size of the files used in the project under check, and Bloks for heavy lifting for a lot of the basic workings.
In addition to these tools, them team also tweaked the Instagram Lite for better performance, by using a different version of JPEG compressor. Knowing that low-powered phones don't usually have high-quality display, the compromised quality won't be significant and won't ruin experience.
What's more, the team also used different CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) to store some assets to reduce the load time.
The end result, is a Lite app that has all the basic bells and whistles around editing, sharing and viewing photos and videos, as well as the ability to create and view Stories, IGTV and the Explore discovery and recommendation algorithms.
In other words, this Instagram Lite is heavily stripped, but still packs a punch, as Facebook retains only the core functionalities.
With the Lite app, Instagram can offer greater compatibility than its 30 MB counterpart, allowing more users to make use of the Facebook-owned platform.
And according to Tzach Hadar, Facebook’s director of product management in Tel Aviv, Israel:
Facebook explained that it went through all these troubles to preserve the aesthetics of Instagram while prioritizing the services that Instagram Lite users use most: messaging and video.
It should be noted here, that Instagram actually had a Lite version prior to this.
However, Facebook killed the app in May 2020, in order to pave the way to create this version.
As the social media giant of the web that controls practically most of online users' "social" activities, the company's growth is no longer tied to the developing world, where people are already benefiting from speedy internet.
Many parts of the world is still underdeveloped.
With Facebook expecting many people living in those areas and regions as potential users, Instagram Lite is one of the best way for the social media to welcome more people on board, in its yet another key move to cater better to consumers in those countries.
It should also be noted that this Lite app, at least initially, lacks advertising and has no key features like Dark Mode, Shopping, and end-to-end encryption.