The Channel Wire

August 12, 2009

Let there be Facebook Lite? Well, sort of. Facebook backtracked a little bit last night when it mistakenly sent too many invites to test the new Facebook Lite version of its popular social networking platform, setting off a flood of commentary all over the Web about the new version, how it will change Facebook and whether Facebook's recent acquisition of FriendFeed has anything to do with it.

The long and the short of it, at least according to reports on TechCrunch and other blogs that ran with the story early, is that yes, there is a Facebook Lite, yes, it's being beta tested, and no, invitations to try it out weren't meant to be sent to so many people. When some invitees clicked the link, they weren't able to access the service and were redirected to the regular Facebook page.

Facebook confirmed as much in a response to TechCrunch.

"This evening, the test was temporarily exposed to a larger set of users by mistake," read Facebook's response Tuesday night, as reported by the site. "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."

Facebook Lite looks a little bit like the mobile version of Facebook, with its functions limited to comments, writing on walls, looking at photos and confirming friend requests. The social networking giant confirmed Facebook Lite is intended for narrowband users, especially in developing markets in places like Eastern Asia. (The move is similar to one tried by Facebook rival MySpace, which already has a MySpace Lite View version of its platform available.)

There's been no immediate word as to when Facebook Lite will be available to U.S. users or anyone else, but our question to Facebook is, why wait? For those of us still unwilling to give the full-on Facebook experience a whirl -- at least to the point of daily engagement -- wouldn't it make sense to bait the hook sooner rather than later and offer Facebook Lite as an alternative?

Not to mention that a bare-bones version of Facebook -- easy to use, quick to update, no fuss, no muss -- would be a cool counterpoint to updated, realtime-driven services like a certain social networking tool that rhymes with fritter.