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Facebook Zero to keep mobile broadband users connected
Monday 22nd February 2010, by Daniel King
A slimmed-down version of social networking site Facebook could soon allow friends to keep in touch with one another using mobile broadband access.
Rachel Hawkes, co-founder of the Social Media Portal, a resource that maps the information on social networks, comments on the widespread reports of Facebook Zero - a stripped-back version of the site expected to launch within weeks.
"It makes perfect sense to strip out any data-heavy features of Facebook - such as photos and videos - and provide a text-only version to encourage more people to use the social network," she says.
However, she points out that the Facebook Lite version already in existence goes a long way towards meeting that need.
Ms Hawkes goes on to suggest that mobile broadband operators may begin to offer multimedia versions of Facebook with a data charge, but could equally decide to provide the slimmed-down version without multimedia as a free service.
Fellow co-founder of the Social Media Portal Tim Gibbon warns that trimming down the service too much risks removing the very things from Facebook Zero that make its fully fledged sibling so popular.
Services such as image sharing could be among the things that make Facebook "sticky" - with Mr Gibbon anticipating that users could migrate to platforms that retain such features if they find the minimalistic approach uninteresting.
Facebook statistics suggest that the majority of the site's 400 million active users access their accounts at least once per day, with 100 million users visiting the site via mobile handsets.
Categories: Broadband
