Twitter Lite App for Android Now Available in 24 More Countries

After a successful trial in the Philippines, Twitter is rolling out its data-friendly Lite Android app in 24 more countries across Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America. To recall, Twitter Lite was first launched as a Progressive Web App (PWA) for the mobile Web in April, with India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico the primary target markets. In September, the company began testing an Android version of the app in the Philippines. Unfortunately, the Android app is not available in India yet.

Available on Google Play, Twitter Lite (under 3MB size) loads quickly on 2G and 3G networks and offers offline support in case users temporarily lose connection.

Just like Facebook Lite, it offers a data saver mode to download only the images or videos users want to see.

"In April, we launched Twitter 'Lite', a new mobile Web experience that minimises data usage, loads quicker on slower connections, and is more resilient on unreliable mobile networks," wrote Jesar Shah, Product Manager at Twitter, in a blog post on Friday.

"Since then we've seen an increase in engagement - for example, tweets sent from Twitter Lite have increased more than 50 percent," she added.

In September, Twitter made it available in the Google Play Store in the Philippines.

"Through on-the-ground user research and Play Store reviews, we received a lot of valuable feedback. Based on these positive results, we have decided to bring it to more people around the world," Shah said.

Twitter Lite is now available in Algeria, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Egypt, Israel, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Malaysia, Nigeria, Nepal, Panama, Peru, Serbia, El Salvador, South Africa, Thailand, Tunisia, Tanzania, and Venezuela.

The company has 330 million monthly active users, 80 percent of whom are outside the US.

Written with inputs from IANS