Facebook Begins Testing Facebook Lite, A Faster Simpler Version Of The Service

August 12th, 2009

It looks like Facebook has tonight turned on a feature called “Facebook Lite” for some users to test out. We’re getting bombarded by tips about it, and some of us are seeing it as well. Unfortunately, it looks like it’s not fully ready for prime time yet, but we have more information and what looks to be a screenshot below, so keep reading.

So what is it? Well, it looks to be exactly what it says it is, a lighter version of Facebook. The beta tester message reads:

We are building a faster, simpler version of Facebook that we call Facebook Lite. It’s not finished yet and we have plenty of kinks to work out, but we would love to get your feedback on what we have built so far.

The URL for the feature is http://lite.facebook.com. So far, users are reporting not seeing much different about the site, if anything.

You’ll recall that MySpace launched a “lite” version for its profiles in April.

Update: Okay, while it seems that most of the users who are getting this message now are not seeing much different, earlier this week, it looks like a very select few may have gotten a sneak peak at Facebook Lite. According to their tweets on it, it appears to be a more Twitter-like. One user notes that it, “looks like a simplified version of twitter with comments enabled. On 2nd thought, it looks like simplified FriendFeed.”

That is of course very interesting since Facebook just bought FriendFeed for around $50 million yesterday.

Update 2: We just found a screenshot of what this apparently looks like. Again, this was taken a few days ago.