7 months in and Facebook shuts down Lite

21 Apr 2010

Social network Facebook has shut down its Lite site after running for just seven months.

Facebook posted a note on its own fan page thanking those who used Lite, which had been aimed at users with slow or poor Internet connections, and stated that it had "learned a lot from the test of a slimmed-down site".

"I think a lot of the Facebook experience was left out of Lite, especially the monetisable parts," the BBC quoted Ray Valdes of Gartner Research as saying.

"The other part of this decision is probably because they have improved the performance sufficiently with the main part of Facebook and made things run better that they didn't need this back-up approach to cover a situation of low performance," Valdes said.

The Lite site emulated Twitter, offering a smaller number of features than the fully-fledged site.

The options on Facebook Lite were limited to letting users write on their wall, post photos and videos, view events and browse other people's profiles. There were no applications or special boxes.

The change was announced on Facebook's own profile page and offered few details as to why the service has been closed down.

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