Facebook has launched a free service 0.facebook.com designed for the third-world – and is only available to certain countries see list at the bottom – which will allow users to get access to Facebook for free.
Facebook anytime, anywhere 0.facebook.com is a new mobile site that includes all of the key features of Facebook but is optimised for speed. It initially is available through more than 50 mobile operators in 45 countries and territories with zero data charges.
The explanation for the free service was given by Sid Murlidhar on the Facebook blog. “when using the mobile internet, people around the world face two main challenges—sometimes the experience is too slow to be fun and the cost of data plans and understanding them can be daunting. We have designed 0.facebook.com to help solve these two barriers and we hope that even more people will discover the mobile Internet with Facebook as a result.”
The 0.facebook.com site includes all the key features of the standard mobile site m.facebook.com. Users can update their status, view their News Feed, like or comment on posts, send and reply to messages, or write on their friends’ Wall just as they do on Facebook.com.
The site is completely free and users using it won’t incur any data charges. People will only pay for data charges when they view photos or when they leave 0.facebook.com to browse other mobile sites. When they click to view a photo or browse another mobile site a notification page will appear to confirm that they will be charged if they want to leave 0.facebook.com
UPDATE – We’re getting some data to say that Facebook are going to add the UK to the list and that Three will be the first network to sign up. And France and Australia are soon to be added.
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