Twitter Lite: Company Testing Android App That Uses Less Data

Twitter is testing out a new way to make its service easier to use — and less resource intensive — for its users. The service is testing out a Twitter Lite version of its Android app on a limited basis, according to TechCrunch.

The mode features all of the same core modes as the standard Twitter app, including the timeline, messages and notifications. However, the app also includes ways to customize the data usage of the app, including a media-download toggle that’ll let users choose what videos or images they want to load when browsing.

At the moment, the app has been rolled out on a limited basis, as it’s only available in the Philippines and runs on devices with Android 5.0 or above. In a statement, Twitter said the app was launched as a limited experiment for now and that the company was still considering whether or not to launch it in additional markets.

“The test of the Twitter Lite app in the Google Play Store in the Philippines is another opportunity to increase the availability of Twitter in this market,” Twitter said. “The Philippines market has slow mobile networks and expensive data plans, while mobile devices with limited storage are still very popular there. Twitter Lite helps to overcome these barriers to usage for Twitter in the Philippines.”

Twitter previously confirmed its plans to launch Twitter Lite earlier this year as an alternative browser mode, but the app gives the version some extra potential reach. The mode is largely intended as a solution for Twitter users in developing or remote markets that don’t have consistent data networks and coverage, so they’ll still be able to access tweets and other users.

In its quarterly earnings call from August, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey clarified the company’s thinking for Twitter Lite:

We’ve been working over the past few months on some early foundational work, and Twitter Lite represents one of these. One of our goals is to make sure Twitter is accessible to anyone in the world. And Twitter Lite exactly hits on this particular goal.

Especially in places like India, we found that our app was just way too slow to access. So we have areas in the world where network infrastructure is more costly, and we could be a lot better in terms of serving those markets and those countries. So it's way too soon to access the -- to assess the usage trends, but our initial results look really positive. But it speaks more broadly to a foundational approach we're taking to make sure that Twitter gets more and more accessible to people all over the world, independent of their device type or the network that they're on.

While the move is one of the smaller ones amid Twitter’s recent investments like live video broadcasting, it’s still another way the company hopes to kickstart its user growth numbers. The microblogging service saw a zero percent change in total monthly active users for the second quarter of 2017, following similar trends in over the past few quarters. By making it easier for users in other countries to join, Twitter likely hopes that it can produce user gains outside of the U.S.