FACEBOOK LITE: The Early Details and Screenshots

We just broke the news earlier tonight that Facebook is launching a newer, simplified version of the Facebook platform, called Facebook Lite. This news comes only a day after Facebook made its blockbuster acquisition of FriendFeedand rolled out its Realtime Facebook Search. You may be asking yourself “what the heck is Facebook Lite?” or maybe “why would Facebook launch a stripped-down version of its website?” We’re here to answer those questions, and we have screenshots of the new Facebook Lite to help us out.

1. What is Facebook Lite?
A: It is a completely stripped-down version of the Facebook platform. From what we can tell, it is almost like a Twitter stream: you can see your most recent status updates and the updates of your friends. There is a left-hand navigation with four main categories: Wall, Info, Firends, and Photos & Videos. It does little more than that.

2. What does Facebook Lite look like?
A: Here is what we believe to be a screenshot of Facebook Lite, courtesy of Hacker News:

Very stripped down, very basic, very reminiscient of Twitter and FriendFeed.

3. Is this Facebook integrating with FriendFeed?
A: Most likely not. The deal is still new to integrate their technologies in this way, and we’re hearing reports that these tests have been ongoing for the last 2-3 days. That would put its development well before the FriendFeed acquisition

4. What’s the point of Facebook Lite?
A: Speculation says it’s a direct assault on Twitter. Facebook continues to find ways to make itself competitive with Twitter. This is why Facebook has been launching features such as public profiles, profile fans, public status updates, and realtime search. Twitter is simple, so Facebook’s fighting back with the same.

However, we don’t know for sure. They may just be making a speedier version for slow connections. We’ll find out more from the Facebook team soon.

5. How can I access it?
A: It’s a limited test for only a subset of users. The fact that thousands, if not millions of users got the test notice was a bug. Most likely Facebook will open up the test to more users very soon, especially since everybody now knows about it.

We’ve contacted Facebook and are awaiting a response on this development. In the meantime, we want to hear your thoughts. Do you think it’s a good idea? What do you think is the social network’s goal is with Facebook Lite? And will people use it?