Did you wake up to a good morning message from Facebook today? Facebook Inc is in an innovation mode to enhance user experience. Recently, they updated the News Feed feature that would allow content to load quickly even when the internet connectivity is weak. Today, they gave users a surprise with a personalised good morning message that said, “Good morning Nishtha, we hope you enjoy Facebook today”.
Recent moves from Facebook suggest they are targeting developing markets. Trying to provide solutions for places with slow internet connectivity is a result of that.
Internet connectivity is slow in emerging markets like Brazil, Mexico and India where most people use 2G connection. This makes it difficult to load videos or pictures that require more data. Facebook is hoping to bring in more users from these countries with this update.
The Facebook app chooses pictures, articles or videos to load depending on the signal strength of users. In case of a weak connectivity, News Feed selects content that is faster and easier to load.
Facebook’s director of engineering Tom Alison said that their employees working in India reported problems of slow connectivity that makes it frustrating to use the app. Thus, the social networking site sent a team to India to look into this matter exclusively and to deliver a faster experience for News Feed in regions with weak connections.
Alison said, “News Feed is a product you tend to want to check regularly throughout the day, and that’s not possible when it’s slow to load.”
The updated News Feed will be able to pull up content in low connection area, even in a subway, by pulling up stories that were loaded during their last Facebook visit but not clicked.
