It looks like Facebook has tonight turned on a feature called “Facebook Lite” for some users to test out. We’re getting bombarded by tips about it, and some of us are seeing it as well. Unfortunately, it appears that it may not be fully ready for prime time yet, but we have more information and what looks to be a screenshot below, so keep reading.
[Update: See Facebook's response at the bottom, the test was mistakenly rolled out to more users than intended tonight.]
So what is it? Well, it looks to be exactly what it says it is, a lighter version of Facebook. The beta tester message reads:
We are building a faster, simpler version of Facebook that we call Facebook Lite. It’s not finished yet and we have plenty of kinks to work out, but we would love to get your feedback on what we have built so far.
The URL for the feature is http://lite.facebook.com. So far, users are reporting not seeing much different about the site, if anything.
You’ll recall that MySpace launched a “lite” version for its profiles in April.
Update: Okay, while it seems that most of the users who are getting this message now are not seeing much different, earlier this week, it looks like a very select few may have gotten a sneak peak at Facebook Lite. According to their tweets on it, it appears to be a more Twitter-like. One user notes that it, “looks like a simplified version of twitter with comments enabled. On 2nd thought, it looks like simplified FriendFeed.”
That is of course very interesting since Facebook just bought FriendFeed for around $50 million yesterday.
Update 2: We just found a screenshot of what this apparently looks like. Again, this was taken a few days ago.
Update 3: FriendFeed co-founder Paul Buchheit shared our story on FriendFeed, so naturally I asked if he knew about this beforehand. “Someone mentioned it earlier today. It sounds very promising,” he says.
Update 4: And here’s Facebook’s official response:
We are currently testing a simplified alternative to Facebook.com that loads a specific set of features quickly and efficiently. Similar to the Facebook experience you get on your mobile phones, Facebook “Lite” is a fast-loading, simplified version of Facebook that enables people to make comments, accept Friend requests, write on people’s Walls, and look at photos and Status updates. We are currently testing Facebook Lite in countries where we are seeing lots of new users coming to Facebook for the first time and are looking to start off with a more simple experience.
This evening, the test was temporarily exposed to a larger set of users by mistake. We have not opened up access to lite.facebook.com to all users at this time. People who are not part of the test and are trying to access “Lite” will be directed to Facebook.com as usual.
Whoops, looks like someone at Facebook jumped the gun on this new feature. Too bad, looks like most of us will have to wait awhile to try it out.
Update 5: And here’s what Facebook Lite is really all about.
Update 6: And here are some more pictures of Facebook Lite.
We are updating this.
[thanks to everyone who sent this in]
it’s supposed to redirect to FriendFeed but the DNS hasn’t propagated yet.
Really? If tis is true… well that makes me think that this was a good buy for Facebook (I honsestly did not see how Facebook would monetize FriendFeed but I guess Facebook Lite could do the trick).
It was a joke…
Not sure it was…
This highlights problem with browsers. Whenever you refresh a page, they reload js and css files, other than html. Now a days js files come in half to full MB, and slow connection will take lot of time. Actually js and css files change once in a month, not at every refresh like html of a webpage. This browser problem is the MAIN problem for net apps.
Websites can counter this problem by clubbing all js files into fewer, and css files into one. Especially fb kind of websites have 5-6 js and 2-3 css files. Since most browsers take 4 downloads at a time more no. of files means slow pipeline.
If that’s true, next time I fart, it will be in the general direction of the facebook offices. I hope they leave ff as is.
And actually let me take that back for a second. If facebook lite is facebook minus the ghey amount of quizzes and mafia wars and someone stole a turnip from my farm, count me in.
;D
@ MG Siegler … this might interest you: http://www.plug...evelopers.-297/
Outside the towering steel gates of Facebook HQ, an uprising had started. A legion of fanboys with FriendFeed-stickered MacBooks and iPhones in hand, clamored for freedom and the safe return of the “best GUI” in all of Social Mediadom.
Deep inside the Facebook fortress, tucked away in an ivory chamber, lay Zuckerberg, in spiritual communion with the great Internet oracle. “Why don’t they love me?” he asked, frail and undone, “What should I say?”
Silence gripped the ivory palace. No banter in the kitchen, no chatter of keyboards, the acolytes were holding their breath. Finally a message appeared on King Zucks’ TweetDeck, a 140 characters of celestial wit: “Tell them to eat cake” said the Oracle, “virtual cake”.
And so it was, one day in the Internet age, that the light of a tiny start-up was extinguished. FriendFeed was dead and the fanboys defeated and nobody thought to record the moment.
Yeahh, I don’t see any difference at all and I was selected. Nothing looks different.
Also, going to the page just brought me back to the home.php page.
Yeah – I get this as well although doesnt seem to go anywhere ?
I received the link but it hasn’t worked yet, just been redirecting back to the homepage.
A look: http://i30.tiny...com/2ni4mjt.jpg
its just rediecting me to the main site :s meh either way i hope its to do with friendfeed
oh so will restarting help?!?!
$sudo reboot
It may help… or I guess you can run the command and release/restore your IP
didn’t work, so i guess it still out there at the ISP level
Showed up for me too, however, as mentioned, redirect doesn’t work (yet):
http://twitpic.com/dlan8
Meanwhile, the box with the announcement seems to have gone… Maybe it was just a glitch?
P
That explains. Was hoping they let it propagate first and then announce.
I can wait and i don’t mind waiting
Oh and also, now the whole “You have been selected as a beta tester…” thing is gone.
Me2 – redirecting back 2 facebook homepage.
NO RESTART will help on this.
Just wait, maybe facebook is tweaking something.
And just at the literal moment I thought to myself, I never want to log into Facebook again, it’s too cluttered.
This is why Facebook reigns king.
Innovate to Obliterate.
sad. facebook has gotten so complicated they are having to provide an alternative to their own product.
how about trimming the fat from your existing site?
Are you for real? That’s exactly what they’re doing. What do you think this is?
looks a lot like twitter…
From the screenshot, it looks as if Facebook has also eliminated the redundancies in the top navigation. Less clutter the better.
This sucks. I was chosen but Firefox failed me this one time and it stop responding. Now I dont have it anymore. DAMMIT!!
It went away for most, if not all people I believe. Mine has been gone for awhile anyways
Oh ok. Damn I was so excited to be a beta tester for Facebook. I was gonna write all my ‘advicez’ and ‘idears’
Too bad.
please some one tell me how too get back to full version of facebook… facebook lite is pathetic
go to my accounts and there u click onto your name and you can get the original version.
I too was fed up with this lite version.
so facebook is now completely twitter. weird.
they seem to be very good at copying others.
maybe they will acquire twitter in the long run? lol
Hey! What happened to my picture? I was getting a kick out of that :-p
pownce!
Interesting, Twitter seems to have just launched twitter lite at http://lite.twitter.com. It’s just an iframe of twitter.com
Facebook just launched Facebook Light, but looks like it now points to Facebook Lite, that now points to Facebook Nite: http://nite.facebook.com/
Haha!
looks like it could a hint at an upcoming real-time streaming product:
http://www.tren...time-streaming/
Am I the only one to really don’t understand why facebook tries to morph as a twitter clone? They’ve lost their initial mission: keep in touch with your friends, with intimacy.
Agreed. A lot of their base is teenagers, and they’re beginning to alienate them by making these changes. I had a friend tell me a few days ago that he didn’t like the new Facebook Homepage because he really didn’t care about the status updates of *all* of his friends.
That’s why there are lists though to organize your friends.
maybe facebook is testing their CPM rate for a front-page, top left ad, like Twitter did with the FireFox PSA http://tcrn.ch/53Ie
this is very interesting, just two days ago i wrote this blog post
http://trinisof...er-to-facebook/
If I had written it like 10days ago, I could have sworn this is in response to my blog. But it’s weird really, If I had been an employee of facebook, someone could have smelled foul play.
I am glad they realize that facebook is too loud. I just pray they don’t acquire “twitter”, or the service will become “roar”.
DETHKLOK RULES!
@BrendanBiryla
There are users who prefer Twitter (or FriendFeed) over Facebook and they want to capture a share of those users. Segmenting users with with a version focused on what they want, while retaining users who are happy with existing version. What’s the downside here . . . I say, smart move.
This is surely a direct shot at twitter, first the friendfeed acquisition and now going microblogging way.
http://techpp.c...re-you-invited/
disgusting step indeed.
“Disgusting”?
It’s just how business works. Google wasn’t the first search engine. TechCrunch wasn’t the first technology blog. Wordpress wasn’t the first blogging software.
Ideas are formed, competition arrives, better products are made.
I’m not saying Facebook will be able to combat Twitter in microblogging, but as a consumer I don’t get why anyone wouldn’t want some more competition.
ya right… as they say “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”
So, Facebook is going to be more like twitter, or something of a mix in with sites like Plurk (and others), or just devolved into a bunch of primitive online games, or the newest format for middle aged gossip, or just become another social network that cannot be monetized well, that sucks up so much capital and gets so overblown that people leave it alone?
I honestly don’t think this has much to do with Facebook wanting to create a Twitter clone. Rather, I suspect that they are building a version that they’ll plan to offer as the default “theme” for not-so-easy-to-monetize countries — having a lightweight version (99% of JS removed, etc..) would create savings in bandwidth and server costs and it’d also make sense for users in countries where broadband connections are still a rarity.
About time. It takes for ever to load at the moment with all the apps.
Theres no way in the world i would want to use my facebook status updates like i do tweets. My FB friends would kill me with all the updates i make! Currently my FB and Twitter account serve 2 completely different purposes!
And why are they doing this? Its not like FB runs slowly or anything – or does it? Maybe I don’t have enough friends or something
So is this like Diet Coke?
Wish I could “like” blog posts….
Looking forward to Facebook Lite. MG, have you switched from Twitter to Facebook?
Wow. I’m on TechCrunch.
I still have access to Facebook Lite if you want more screenshots.
Awesome!! Please do post them.
This is interesting, will the 2 products be competing or are the linked to one another.
i have a suggestion about the home page:
make 3 tabs : first one to reflect the world events regardless of anybody’s friends list or the network he is in! just the most important ongoing international new feed.
second, show the an scroll of that network online participants for that individual so he can see what is going on in that particular network!
and third, is as how it is now with all the friends and familiar online participants.
Yep just copying Twitter it seems.
Twitter battling aside.
FB have clearly realised that all the wizzy ajaxy features have got to a point where the site really no longer works without JavaScript and requires 14mbps broadband to have a decent experience. They’ve out-teched half the planet, so they’ve built an accessible version. I welcome it, and there’s a lesson in there too.
If you want a JS-free Facebook on a 278k modem, you can always access the mobile site
http://m.facebook.com/
I meant of course 28k modem
That’ll teach me to be sarcastic :/
that lite.facebook.com link redirecting me to the home page. Am I missing something?
Oh, great… are we going the way of junk food? Next will we have Gmail lite and Word lite and Yahoo lite and (burrp!) iPhone lite and TechCrunch lite…? How about Twitter lite? Huperson lite?
while Facebook Lite does appear to be loading faster, i’m not noticing any glaring visual changes.
What if it’s not an exercise? What if this is the beginning of a move against NATO?
The simpler, the better.
Rumor has it Facebook Lite is looking a lot like Twitter and FriendFeed. But since these other sites already exist, will Facebook be able to compete? Or since Facebook itself is such a huge site, will it overshadow the other “simple” sites? I suppose we will have to wait and see…
También se podría decir que ha simplificado al estilo Tuenti. La característica más destacada por parte de los usuarios de Tuenti frente a FaceBook, es la simpicidad, ¿Querrán hacerse con sus usuarios?
MySpace launched a Lite version 12 months ago.
sincerely facebook lite is **********shit. Since i clicked on the link i can’t watch videos!! except those from youtube! Not even those that i’ve post!!
if anyone come across new information on this platform , please share. . .thanks! @jdbasketball
Looks like a facebook for people who are not interested of what kind of bottle you are, more interested on status than superflous things