Twitter introduces Lite mobile web service for areas with poor connectivity

Twitter LiteTwitter is rolling out a new mobile web service aimed at minimising data usage and providing a better service for those with limited or sporadic connectivity.

Twitter Lite is not a standalone app, but a mobile web experience that provides much of the same features as the Twitter app itself. It maintains the timeline, Tweets, DMs, trends, profiles, media uploads, notifications, and more – while limiting data usage, taking up less than 1MB on devices, and providing faster launch times and navigation.

Furthermore, it features a data saver mode – where images and videos are shown in preview before making a decision to fully load them – and has additional features in Google Chrome and other modern browsers on Android devices.

“Every day, millions of people around the world use Twitter to see what’s happening right now. However, there are several barriers to using Twitter, including slow mobile networks, expensive data plans, or lack of storage on mobile devices,” said Patrick Traughber, product manager at Twitter, in a blog post.

A key region that Twitter is aiming the Lite version at is India. It has partnered with Vodafone to promote Twitter Lite to customers as a way to get the latest updates from the Indian Premier League in cricket, which has just got underway.

Traughber said: “No matter where you are in the world, we want to make Twitter the best way for you to get real-time updates on news, sports, entertainment, politics, and other topics that matter most to you.”

Back in February, YouTube launched a lighter version of its app called YouTube Go. The app lets the users choose to stream their selected videos immediately in either basic quality or standard quality, or download for later offline viewing.