After testing in the Phillipines, Twitter has announced that a “Lite” version of its Android app is now available in 24 countries.
The micro-blogging firm has been testing ways to make its service more accessible to folks in developing countries since April this year.
Twitter Lite was initially a mobile website that loaded faster than the regular Twitter and was more resilient on unreliable mobile networks.
“We wanted to make Twitter Lite more discoverable, so in September we tested making it available in the Google Play Store in the Philippines,” said Twitter product manager Jesar Shah.
“Through on-the-ground user research and Play Store reviews, we received a lot of valuable feedback. People using the app valued its small size, quick loading, and minimal data usage. Based on these positive results, we have decided to bring it to more people around the world,” added the product manager.
The light-weight Twitter app will reportedly load quickly on 2G and 3G networks and also offers offline support should the internet connection drop unexpectedly.
Users will also be able to engage a data saver mode which will allow them to only download the images and videos they want to see.
The install size of the app has also be shrunk down to 3MB.
Twitter Lite is available right now on the Google Play Store in the following countries: 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.
