Twitter announces availability of Twitter Lite in 24 more countries

Twitter has announced that Twitter Lite is now available in the Google Play Store in 24 more countries across Africa, Asia, Europe, Middle East and Latin America including Algeria, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Israel, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Malaysia, Nigeria, Nepal, Panama, Peru, Serbia, South Africa, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, and Venezuela. Anyone using an Android device in these countries (along with the Philippines) can download Twitter Lite from the Google Play Store.

"No matter where you are in the world, we want to make Twitter the best way for you to see what's happening in the world and talk about it," said Jesar Shah, Product Manager, Twitter. "You can use Twitter and Twitter Lite to get real-time updates on news, sports, entertainment, politics, and other topics that matter most to you.

Twitter Lite was originally launched in April 2017 as a new mobile web experience (mobile.twitter.com) that minimizes data usage, loads quicker on slower connections, and is more resilient on unreliable mobile networks. Since then, Twitter Lite has seen an increase in engagement -- for example, Tweets sent from Twitter Lite have increased more than 50%. Safety and performance improvements, GIF search, ranked Home timeline, and more features have been added to Twitter Lite over the past few months.

After making Twitter Lite available in the Google Play Store for the Philippines in September 2017, the company received valuable feedback through on-the-ground user research and Play Store reviews. People who used the Twitter Lite app valued its small size, quick loading, and minimal data usage. Based on these positive results, the company is bringing the Twitter Lite app to more people around the world.

For both the mobile web version and the Android app, Twitter Lite is fast, takes up less space, and is data-friendly:

• Loads quickly on 2G and 3G networks, and offers offline support in case the connection is temporarily lost;

• Minimizes data usage, and offers a data saver mode to download only selected images or videos; and

• Reduces install size to under 3MB to avoid taking up too much room on a mobile device.