FB Lite : Do we need it?

For those who were isolated from the tech news circuit for reasons beyond their own control i.e. green bug-eyed monsters/pixies chewing up PVC cables, or something along the lines of that…Facebook announced that it was soon going to release a new version of Facebook, known as Facebook Lite.

For those who still haven’t figured it out, this new Facebook is going to be a very lightweight version for people with slow PCs and 14.4 kbps dial-up internet connections. Yes, it may be hard to comprehend that such things still exist, but you’ve just got to face reality and/or mock them…

But this has got me thinking…there are already at least 3 versions of Facebook that I kno of. m.facebook.com, which is meant for barebones mobile browsers. Then you’ve got x.facebook.com, which is meant for slighlty meatier phones, like the iPhone, HTC Touch, Blackberry, N95 and so on. And then we’ve got the standard Facebook, which we can access from our computer browsers. Now I’ve been to x.facebook.com, and I find it the best of them all. I can handle all my status updates, comments, requests, comments, photos without having irritating FB applications taking up my precious bandwidth.

Plus, x.facebook’s got a iPod/iPhone-esque interface, with sliding screens et al. It looks kinda slicker than normal Facebook, if I’m honest. I’ve started using it a lot. Now, it just needs a few tweaks, like adding the ability to comment on news feeds, without having to go all the way to the guy’s wall or something like that. A lightweight chat interface wouldn’t be all that bad either.

But then I’m not one of the lucky users who’ve been invited to test out FB Lite. Maybe it’s a bit like what I’m thinking it should be. Or maybe it’s just like Facebook Normal, but watered down. Whatever it is, I’ll probably switch over. I simply can’t bear normal FB’s loading times, not with my 256kbps connection…