Twitter Lite Now Available in PHL; Allows Users to Save Up to 70% Data

Representatives from Twitter Southeast Asia on Wednesday launched Twitter Lite in the Philippines, allowing users to save up to 70 percent data, and also allows them to continue browsing the online platform even when their data connection becomes intermittent.

Basically, using a Progressive Web App technology, Twitter Lite can be launched on one’s browser 30 percent faster than the the Twitter that people are currently using.

Furthermore, the executives said only 1 MB memory is needed to launch this on a mobile device.

Launched two months ago in India then in Indonesia, Twitter Lite is now available in 42 languages, including Tagalog.

It carries the same features as Twitter, but has additional features such as Twitter Poll and Safety Reporting, where users can block, report or mute things/accounts they don’t want to see on their feeds.

In an interview with the Philippine News Agency, Tina Pang, Twitter Southeast Asia head of sales, said the Philippines is an important market for the company, adding that the Philippines is one of its top 10 markets globally.

“We’ve seen Filipinos are truly passionate in entertainment, sports. (Tweets about) Aldub is a great example,” she remarked.

She was referring to the hashtag AldubEBTamangPanahon which garnered 41 million tweets in 2015. Twitter earlier noted that this number of tweets is even bigger than the tweets for the Super Bowl.

Aldub is the phenomenal love team of Alden Richards and “Yaya Dub” from the hit “Kalye Serye” of noontime show, Eat Bulaga.

Pang also cited an examples the huge volume of tweets during Manny Pacquiao’s fights, as well as the 40 million tweets generated from the previous election.

“Other love teams such as KathNiel (Kathryn Bernardo, Daniel Padilla) and JaDine (James Reid, Nadine Lustre) also generate huge volume of tweets from fans and other Filipinos,” she added.

When PNA asked Pang the edge of Twitter Lite from Facebook Lite which also aims to allow users to save data, she noted that Twitter Lite can be browsed even when one has an unstable data connection.

“The page that the user will see is not empty even if he/she loses data connection,” she said, and also reiterated that Twitter Lite is more accessible as it only requires 1 MB memory.

Meanwhile, the data-saving feature of Twitter Lite was made possible as Twitter has partnered with the country’s major mobile data providers.

“We noticed that people are information enthusiasts. They want to follow celebrities. They want to know what’s happening. Thus, we target to reach a wider audience (via the Twitter Lite),” Pang mentioned during the launch.

Twitter has previously partnered with the country’s three giant television networks for entertainment content. It may also be recalled that Twitter has also partnered with the Commission on Elections before.

Twitter Lite is available at mobile.twitter.com. Users can also have Twitter Lite’s app-like push notifications even without an account in App Store or Google Play. (Ma. Cristina C. Arayata/PNA)