The new application is designed for emerging markets, where mobile connectivity is not yet widespread and connection speed is very limited
A billion users for WhatsApp; slightly less for Facebook Messenger; a few hundred million users for Apple’s FaceTime, Google’s Hangouts and Microsoft’s Skype. Instant messaging, in short, is one of the driving forces of the web.
This is also the reason why the various players on the market are trying to differentiate their products, so as to broaden the base and gnaw at new slices of the market. Facebook, for example, presented last October 3 Messenger Lite, a “lighter” version of its instant messaging application. The attempt of Zuckerberg’s company is to extend the use of its messaging app to Android base users. Messenger Lite potrà infatti essere scaricata anche sugli smartphone con poca memoria e in quelle zone del mondo non coperte dalla banda larga.
Un miliardo di utenti
Facebook ha recentemente annunciato che più di un miliardo di persone usano Messenger ogni mese e quest’ultimo sforzo evidenzia il tentativo di raggiungere “the next billion users”, ovvero il prossimo miliardo di utenti ed espandersi così verso nuovi mercati. Non è un caso che la nuova app sarà prima lanciata in Paesi come Kenya, Tunisia, Malesia, Sri Lanka e Venezuela dove la rete e la connettività mobile sono nelle primissime fasi di sviluppo. Se tutto dovesse andare come nelle previsioni dei tecnici Facebook, Messenger Lite sarà successivamente disponibile anche in altri paesi in via di sviluppo.
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Fonte foto: Facebook
Messenger Lite
Messenger Lite ha le stesse funzioni di Messenger. In fact, it will be possible to send and receive messages, photos, links and stickers. As Facebook writes, the new app will be easy and fast to download and will weigh only 10MB. As for the “look”, Messenger Lite has the same logo as Messenger but with the colors reversed. The lightning bolt of the new app will be blue and the background of the “bubble chat” will be white. “With Messenger Lite more people can stay in touch, regardless of their connection speed and the characteristics of their devices,” writes Tom Mulcahy, the engineer responsible for the development of Messenger Lite.