{"id":339493,"date":"2017-04-28T02:44:54","date_gmt":"2017-04-27T18:44:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1482496"},"modified":"2017-04-28T02:44:54","modified_gmt":"2017-04-27T18:44:54","slug":"facebook-sidesteps-snapchat-by-launching-messenger-lite-in-150-more-countries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/facebook-sidesteps-snapchat-by-launching-messenger-lite-in-150-more-countries\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook sidesteps Snapchat by launching Messenger Lite in 150 more countries"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Facebook is aggressively pursuing the international and developing world markets Snapchat hasn\u2019t prioritized. Facebook Lite recently hit 200 million users, and Instagram just rolled out offline mode for Android. Now after launching Messenger Lite for Android in 5 countries in October, it\u2019s expanding to 150 more including Vietnam, Nigeria, Peru, Turkey, Germany, Japan, and the Netherlands.<\/p>\n

Facebook\u2019s head of Messenger David Marcus announced<\/a> the rollout today saying \u201cMaking sure that everyone can have a great experience with Messenger irrespective of the age of their smartphone is very important to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Messenger Lite offers Messenger\u2019s core features like messaging, photo and link sharing, and stickers, but lacks the more data-intensive new features like Messenger Day, camera effects, and the outside developer app platform.<\/p>\n

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The app was developed to be a small file so it downloads quick and doesn\u2019t take up much space on memory-constrained old phones. It\u2019s designed to minimize data use to save people money and still work on slow or unstable connections like 2G networks. It works offline and delivers messages when you regain connection, and is compatible with almost any Android phone including the old Gingerbread OS.<\/p>\n

Now at 1.2 billion users, most of Messenger\u2019s audience is outside the United States. If Facebook can make it more convenient for them to use its chat app instead of standard and more expensive SMS, it creates a big reason to stay in the Facebook family of apps. Messaging has emerged as the center of the mobile experience, and owning it worldwide is crucial to Facebook\u2019s continued power.<\/p>\n

Snap Inc meanwhile touts the concentration of 60% of its users in the world\u2019s top 10 advertising markets as an advantage for efficiency. But because the app is inherently high-bandwidth due to all the video content, it doesn\u2019t work as well in developing markets. It hasn\u2019t focused on these markets or on Android, so when a low-end Android sign-up bug emerged, it ended up contributing to Snapchat seeing minimal user growth in the Rest Of World region.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a big risk for Snapchat. International growth drives the ubiquity that leads to network effect, making social networks more sticky. The scale also attracts advertisers. As Facebook and Snapchat increasingly compete for mobile users and ad dollars, Facebook\u2019s robust international growth strategy could be a deciding factor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\" Facebook is aggressively pursuing the international and developing world markets Snapchat hasn’t prioritized. Facebook Lite recently hit 200 million users, and Instagram just rolled out offline mode for Android. Now after launching Messenger Lite for Android in 5 countries in October, it’s expanding to 150 more including Vietnam, Nigeria, Peru, Turkey, Germany, Japan, and the… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"\/ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5817,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[59,66,26],"class_list":["post-339493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-media","tag-techcrunch","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5817"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339493\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}