I have been critical of Facebook and few others in the past. It goes down to one thing: companies don’t understand what it’s like to build apps for developing world. So I kept on publishing articles like A Six Year Lag: Why Switching To An Ancient Smartphone Taught Me World Isn’t Equal and Smartphone Wars: Why Smartphone Users In India Are Going To Delete Your App.
Basically, the developed world, living in it’s own Bay-area bubble and dominated by Facebook, Twitter, Airbnb, Spotify, Instagram, and Snapchat has no idea how the rest of the world lives.
Most users simply can’t use Facebook app outside of Wi-Fi cafes, because it’s bloated, slow, and data-consuming.
But after a long wait, and—I’m being optimistic here—nudged by stories I and many other wrote over the last couple of years, the things are changing.
For one, Facebook now has Messenger Lite available in Canada’s Google Play store (and a few other countries where it was initially deployed), which means that today Messenger went from the worst to the best messenger app (at least for Canadians—who gained Messenger Lite today and are one of the most connected nations on the planet).
The main benefit is that app built for speed and simplicity. At least for now, the app forgoes bloatware of “Add to My Day”, or Games, or Groups, or all the different subsections of active users and so on.
It’s just a list of your contacts (see screenshot on the left).
In the chat, there are also no games, location, plans, GIFs, and other dozens of useless extensions. You can still call, however, which is definitely useful.
In short, even if you live in a bubble of free unlimited LTE internet, it pays to download Messenger Lite. If not for the increased speed and simplicity of the app, at least you will show Facebook another data point that you, as a human being, care about your user experience.
Evgeny Tchebotarev is a founder of 12-million-photographers-strong community 500px, backed by Andreessen Horowitz; and currently helps other companies unlock 10x potential. He is usually based in Taipei, Taiwan.
If you want to help other people discover good stories like this, please clap when you are done reading 👏
To Understand Emerging Markets, Everyone Should Download Facebook’s Messenger Lite was originally published in China Now on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
