Facebook Goes Back To Basics With 'Lite' Version

Daniel Ionescu, PC World
Thin is in at Facebook. It introduced an alternate front door for the social network called "Facebook Lite," a slimmed-down version of the site, optimized for those with slower Internet connections. Facebook Lite features a serious design revamp and is available only to users based in the U.S. and in India.
Facebook Lite brings a simplified, faster-loading experience in comparison to the traditional site. Part of the new Facebook Lite design, the news feed includes a simple top toolbar and buttons for posting status updates and media uploads. Facebook Lite can be accessed by visiting www.lite.facebook.com.
The profile page on Facebook Lite removes many of the bells and whistles from the traditional version and keeps only the basics: your wall, info, friends, and photos and videos. The status and sharing interface is unchanged; however, you can't view wall-to-wall posts or invite friends to an event.
The most notable omissions from the new Facebook Lite interface are the third-party applications. Only a handful of Facebook's own applications are available, so that you can get a reasonable experience from the site. Other changes include birthdays and contacts moved at the top of the feed and real-time updates at the bottom of the page.
Facebook Lite was initially available as a beta test with a limited number of users in August. It is yet unknown when or whether the Facebook Lite interface will be available to users outside the U.S. and India.
The introduction of Facebook Lite is widely seen as stab at Twitter's simple interface, which is focused more on messaging and status sharing in real time. To better compete with Twitter's surge in popularity, Facebook has already introduced real-time updates to the news feed and acquired rival FriendFeed.
In the latest move to become more Twitter-like, Facebook also introduced on Thursday status update tagging, a feature that works in a similar manner to "@" replies on Twitter. My colleague JR Raphael has more on Facebook's Twitterification here.
Follow Daniel on Twitter @danielionescu

Can Twitter be Saved?

By: Mark Gimein, The Big Money

Even by Internet standards of hyper-growth, there has never been a phenomenon like Twitter. Less than a year and a half ago, Twitter hit 1 million users. It now has 44 million, a rate of expansion so rapid that if it could continue growing at that speed it would in another year and a half be used by everyone on Earth. It is impressive not just for the sheer number of users but for the share of mind it has carved out, from the national elections to its starring role in Iran's election protests. Twitter has become so ubiquitous so fast that it's almost impossible to imagine it disappearing.

But it can. The irony of Twitter is that even as it becomes more pervasive, it is in danger of very quickly becoming markedly less useful. Twitter is in danger of collapsing under its own weight. Not because of its problems keeping up with traffic—those are solvable—but because the volume of material that Twitter unleashes now puts impossible demands on its users' time and attention. The problem, in a nutshell, is information overload. The more Twitter grows and the more feeds Twitterers follow, the harder it gets to mine it for what is truly useful and engaging. Even as Twitter reaches a peak in the cultural cred cycle, it's time to start asking how it can be saved from itself. Read More........