Twitter Lite launched in India first: Here is how to use it

Twitter on Thursday said it was releasing a lighter version of its platform, called Twitter Lite, first in India via a Progressive Web App to garner more users from the country as it suffers from poor cellular network connectivity.

In simple words, the new light version can be accessed from a web browser in contrast to the heavier app version available on iOS and Android that needs to be downloaded from either the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. A Progressive Web App as the name suggests is web based and it uses modern web capabilities to deliver an app-like user experience.

According to the company, the new web-based interface "is a new mobile web experience accessible to anyone with a smartphone or tablet with a browser, optimized for speed with up to 30% faster launch times, reduces data usage up to 70% with data saver mode turned on, and takes up less than 1MB on mobile devices."

The Lite interface, supported in six Indian languages including Hindi, Bengali, Marathi and Kannada, will also provide push notifications and offline support. This means users will still be able to see earlier tweets on their feed till the time the internet is connected.

Twitter Lite will also provide Vodafone customers a customised timeline of top cricket-related Tweets available throughout the T20 season.

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