Not everyone in the world enjoys fast and stable internet. There are still places in the world where connections are relatively unstable and expensive.
For this reason, Twitter announced that its Twitter Lite app is expanding to 21 more countries, including: Argentina, Belarus, Dominican Republic, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Morocco, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Romania, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, Uruguay, Yemen, and Zimbabwe.
These countries join other markets where Twitter Lite has been available, such as: Algeria, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Egypt, Israel, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Malaysia, Nigeria, Nepal, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Serbia, El Salvador, South Africa, Thailand, Tunisia, Tanzania and Venezuela.
This makes the data-saving app available to a total of more than 45 countries.
"There are several barriers to using Twitter, including slow mobile networks, expensive data plans, or lack of space on mobile devices," the company wrote in its blog post. "When building new products, we want to make sure what we create allows people to have the best possible experience, no matter where they are."
Twitter Lite was first introduced in 2017.
The app is similar to other data-saving apps, like Facebook Lite and YouTube Go, which strips the app from unnecessary features to make it lightweight and fast. It also has a smaller footprint, making it smaller in both download and install size.
It also offers some unique features, like a Data Saver mode which allows users to control which images or video to load.
Once enabled, Twitter doesn't load those heavy contents automatically, requiring users to tap on the "Load Image" or "Load video," each time they want to see those contents.
This particular feature should reduce a lot of data usage, useful considering that most Twitter tweets are either accompanied with images or videos.
Twitter Lite app includes features that the Twitter original app has. Like the Bookmarks feature, the Night Mode theme, and threads. And starting with the release of Twitter Lite in more countries, version 2.0 is also introducing a push notification feature.
Twitter claimed on November 2017 that its Lite app led to an increase of 50 percent in tweets. The company also noted that 80 percent of its then 330 million monthly users were outside the U.S., its home country
However, almost a year later, in July 2018, that number remains roughly the same: Twitter had a total of 335 million users around the world.
Twitter is experiencing a series of problem, with made it struggle in getting more engagement. The social media is not showing great improvements since the announcement, and isn’t growing that quickly outside the U.S..
As of July 2018, Twitter's global audience had only grown by a 3.5 percent over the past year.
This is pale if compared to other platforms.
While Twitter is not as impressive as it used to be, expanding the Lite app is showing how relentless the company is in its attempt to get more users wherever they are.
The social media hopes that by making the Lite app available in more countries, it can address the needs of those with low-bandwidth, especially in international markets.