Facebook has made another fantastic launch! early morning on Wednesday (19th May 2010) – Sri Lanka time, Facebook announced the launch of 0.Facebook.com – an imageless version of the standard m.facebook.com site for their mobile users. And what’s most fantastic about this new site is that, those of us who login to Facebook through mobile phones can access it free of charge!
According to Facebook, more than 100 million people actively use Facebook from their mobile devices and over 200 mobile operators in 80 countries offer “Facebook Mobile”. Initially, free browsing over 0.facebook.com is available only through 50 mobile operators in 45 countries and territories including all you lucky lucky Mobitel users in Sri Lanka – including me of course ;)
Here is the list of all countries and territories along with mobile operators that currently offer 0.facebook.com free of charge. Click on image to view full list:
Facebook admits that most people do face certain challenges when using Facebook over their mobile device over m.facebook.com, mainly being the speed and the cost. So, keeping these two main challenges in mind, the new 0.facebook.com has been developed to be faster and free.
Over the new site, Facebook says that you can access the key features of their standard mobile site m.facebook.com; such as updating your status, viewing the News Feed, Liking and Commenting on posts, Sending and Replying to messages, Writing on a friend’s Wall, just as you would on Facebook.com completely free of charge from those mobile operators who offer this service.
However, to make your browsing experience faster, photos will be viewable only by clicking on them AND you will have to pay the normal data charges if you want to view photos. You will also be subjected to normal mobile browsing charges if you leave 0.facebook.com and go to another site. A notification page will appear, reminding you that you will be charged if you attempt to view a photo or leave the site.
And those of you who are not yet lucky enough to have this service in your country or offered through your mobile operators yet, keep your fingers crossed... Facebook says the service would be available through many other mobile operators soon. Some of the operators and regions that will have 0.facebook.com available worldwide have been listed by Facebook as :
- Telstra in Australia
- Movistar in El Salvador
- SFR in France
- XL in Indonesia
- DiGi in Malaysia
- Telecom NZ in New Zealand
- SMART in the Philippines
- Vodafone in Qatar
- Digicel in Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago
- 3 in the UK
- MTN in Cameroon and Guinea Conakry
So, without much delay, I checked out this feature over my cheap Chinese mobile handset and true enough, the speed was worth smiling about :) How about you? How many of you have checked out the new 0.facebook.com? or have it going in your country? What’s your opinion?
