Twitter eyes EM growth with ‘Lite’ mobile service

Twitter on Thursday became the latest technology company to unveil a slimmed down version of its services aimed at emerging markets users with slower internet connections, with the launch of Twitter Lite.

The new mobile web service, which can be launched with a browser, provides key features of the social media app known for its 140 character “tweets”, including a timeline, direct messages, trends, profiles and media uploads.

It is said to have a 30 per cent faster launch time and takes up less than 1MB on a mobile device. It also boasts a data saver mode, which can reduce data usage by as much as 70 per cent.

Jack Dorsey’s company, which is struggling to drive user growth, also announced a new partnership with Vodafone — one of the largest telecom operators in India with over 200m subscribers — on Thursday, to promote Twitter Lite to its customers as a way to get live sports updates.

Twitter hopes to use the sports updates, which can be read in six languages spoken in India, to leverage the nation’s obsession with cricket and drive user growth in the world’s second most populous country.

In offering a leaner version of its services, Twitter follows Microsoft, which in February launched Skype Lite, a version of its video conference service that was built specifically for India and optimised for 2G and unstable network connections. It also comes a day after Alphabet’s Google launched YouTube Go for Indian users with spotty internet connections.

The impetus to modify its offerings comes as Twitter has seen average monthly user growth level off since 2014 and as it faces increased competition for digital advertising revenue. Monthly active users inched up just 0.6 per cent to 319m in the fourth quarter from the third, and were up 4 per cent from a year ago.

With this move Twitter was likely going to attract “users with low value to advertisers”, said Michael Pachter an analyst at Wedbush, noting that people who have more disposable income in India have access to higher speed internet. He added: “It’s a good move for driving user growth but probably not a productive means for driving revenue growth.”

Twitter shares were up 0.3 per cent in mid-morning trade in New York, trimming its year-to-date losses to 10.6 per cent.