Facebook is developing a new service, Facebook
Lite, which will help it compete with Twitter head-on. This follows
this week's acquisition of social network Friendfeed.
The social networking website has asked some users to beta test
the service
known as Facebook Lite.
According to blog Mashable, "it is a completely stripped-down
version of the Facebook platform. From what we can tell, it is
almost like a Twitterstream: you can see your most recent status
updates and the updates of your friends."
This follows yesterday's news that
Facebook has acquired the social network Friendfeed, a startup
company which allows people to see what their friends are doing
online and share content.
It is possible that Facebook will also use Friendfeed to rival
microblogging service Twitter, as it has similar capacities in
real-time search. Facebook made a failed attempt to buy Twitter
last year.
Twitter has grown by more than 3,000% in the past year,
according to figures from internet monitoring site Hitwise. Its
share of UK traffic increased by about 33 times between February
2008 and February 2009. The site is growing 25 times faster than
Facebook, which grew 123% in the same period.