The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
Representatives from Twitter Southeast Asia recently launched Twitter Lite in the Philippines, allowing users to save up to 70 percent of data and continue browsing the popular online microblogging site, even when their data connection becomes erratic.
Twitter Lite, which uses Progressive Web App technology, can be launched 30 percent faster on one’s browser than the Twitter that people are currently using.
Only 1 megabyte of memory is needed to launch Twitter Lite on a mobile device.
Launched two months ago in India and later in Indonesia, Twitter Lite is now available in 42 languages, including Filipino.
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 or accounts they don’t want to see on their feeds.
In an interview with the Philippine News Agency, Twitter Southeast Asia Head of Sales Tina Pang said the Philippines is an important market for the company, adding that the country is one of its top 10 markets globally.
“We’ve seen (that) Filipinos are truly passionate (about) entertainment (and) sports. (Tweets about) Aldub is a great example,” Pang said.
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 those for the United States’ Super Bowl.
Aldub is the phenomenal onscreen love team of Alden Richards and Maine “Yaya Dub” Mendoza from the hit Kalye Serye series of popular 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 2016 national elections.
“Other love teams, such as KathNiel (Kathryn Bernardo and Daniel Padilla) and JaDine (James Reid and Nadine Lustre) also generate huge volume of tweets from fans and other Filipinos,” she said.
When PNA asked Pang about the edge of Twitter Lite over Facebook Lite, which also aims to allow users to save data, she noted that the former can be browsed, even when one has an unstable data connection.
“The page that the user will see is not empty, even if he or she loses data connection,” she said, reiterating that Twitter Lite is more accessible as it only requires 1MB of memory.
Meanwhile, the data-saving feature of Twitter Lite was made possible as Twitter has partnered with the country’s major mobile-data providers, Globe Telecom and Smart Communications.
“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 Twitter Lite),” Pang said during the launch.
Twitter previously partnered with the country’s three giant television networks—ABS-CBN 2, GMA 7, and TV5—for entertainment content. The online platform had also partnered with the Commission on Elections (Comelec) 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. PNA