Internet has gone to more places with speed increasing in many areas. But not everyone is benefiting from that luxury. Some smartphones aren't yet able to reach that speed, and there are still places that internet speed is still unstable or relatively slow.
In its effort to reach more users on those particular places, on April 6th, 2017, the microblogging platform Twitter has launched a Lite version of its service. Accessible on mobile.twitter.com it promises a faster experience with smaller data consumption.
The first difference compared to the usual Twitter, is its slightly pared down interface. To speed loading times on slow connections, it has some features eliminated such as photo editing and livestreaming. So Lite is basically a lighter version of Twitter.com.
The next difference is the Data Saver feature that users can turn on in the settings menu. This will make Twitter to load lightweight previews of images, allowing users to save up to 70 percent of data usage.
"While smartphone adoption grew to 3.8 billion connections by the end of 2016, 45 percent of mobile connections are still on slower 2G networks, according to GSMA," said Twitter announcing Lite.
To create the Lite version of its site, Twitter explained that it's a Progressive Web App (PWA) that takes up less than 1MB. It's essentially a client-side JavaScript application program paired with a Node.js server for authentication and loading up the app shell. Once the process running at the background is ready, Twitter connects it to the Twitter's API to deliver tweets and other contents.
The Lite version of Twitter works with any mobile devices using a web browser.
"Twitter Lite is interactive in under 5 seconds over 3G on most devices," said Twitter.
And because Twitter created Lite as a PWA, users can add a shortcut to the mobile site to their Android home screen and enable push notifications to mimic the mobile app's behavior as well.
Not only users on slow internet connection can benefit from the Lite version of Twitter. Users using Wi-Fi or 4G/LTE can also experience a faster loading interface. Those people that don't need the fully-fledged Twitter app can also benefit from Twitter Lite for faster loading tweets.
"Twitter Lite is a great way for many people in emerging markets across Asia Pacific, Latin America and Africa to experience Twitter for the first time on their mobile devices," continued Twitter.
This is a welcome move from Twitter. But it's kind of late for the company to introduce its own version of Lite since competitors like Facebook has launched its own Lite for about two years.