Facebook is the most downloaded app on the Apple App Store. On Google Play, it is also one of the most, if not the most, downloaded app with over a billion downloads. Everyone who owns a smartphone, has to have the Facebook app on it.
Importance of Facebook’s User Base
Facebook’s business model is based entirely on its user base. As it is a free service, all of its revenue is ad-based. And ad-based will only increase if the number of users of the service increase.
Facebook already has an immense user base but it wants to keep on growing. With almost everyone in the developed world using Facebook (or shunning it), all the opportunity for growth lies in the developing world. Its internet.org campaign about bringing internet access to everyone in the world is an indication that Facebook’s ultimate goal is to have literally everyone in the world using Facebook.
Why Facebook Lite?
But as everybody who owns a smartphone, or any computing device for that matter, knows how they have a habit of freezing and getting stuck while doing even simple tasks. Unless you always have the latest smartphone on the market, you must have come across this situation.
As it turns out, Facebook has decided that a significant portion of its user base, at this moment in time, uses low end smartphones which struggle to run the Facebook app smoothly. To solve this, they have developed a new app called Facebook Lite for people running lower end smartphones.
Facebook Lite is all about making Facebook more easily accessible and easier to use than ever before for low end users. If an app freezes or responds very slowly, users will definitely get annoyed and irritated and with time, the time spend using the app will increase. So Facebook has acted, and has developed an app to solve this issue.
With Facebook aggressively targeting the populations of developing countries, it seems that the rise of Facebook will only continue in the coming years.
