Ready for Facebook Lite
Palo Alto, California - Facebook today announced that it’s previewing a dumbed-down version of its popular social networking in certain countries. The new site, dubbed Facebook Lite, is being soft launched in Afghanistan, India and North Korea prior to a world-wide roll-out before the end of the year. A company spokesman, speaking anonymously to ChinaSpike.com out of fear of knee-jerk reprisals from the user base, said the company had made a conscious decision to first test Facebook Lite in “countries where the mean IQ is on a par with Homer Simpson”. The move to Facebook Lite comes hot on the heels of a Facebook data analyst making the shocking discovery that the average IQ of the Facebook user base was somewhere between 60 and 80. That put’s the rapidly-growing social network somewhere between Twitter (average IQ of 48) and Google (average IQ of 90, or 90.8 if you include the IQs of co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, or 88.2 if you include the IQ of CEO Eric Schmidt, who generally declines to be counted as a Google user to avoid negative publicity).
“I founded Facebook in 2004 while I was at Havard with the sole purpose of leveraging the power of the Internet to connect some of the brightest young American minds in the world, myself included, and create a one-of-a-kind closed network of like-minded, high intelligent quotient and really really super smart young American people who would go on to shape the world in centuries to come. Little did I know that things would come to this. I am deeply shocked by the findings and would like to see Facebook Lite available to all our users as soon as testing in those countries is complete,” said Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and sole founder of Facebook.
The Facebook CEO added that it was important that the intelligent quotient deficiency was rectified as soon as possible by replacing the Facebook that users around the world have all come to love with the crippled version and that an entry-level IQ requirement of 150 be imposed on the current site. All users will be migrated to Facebook Lite upon its launch and users wishing to use the original site will be subjected to an IQ test as part of the registration process. Addition of the MENSA Facebook Application will also be mandatory for all users.
“We should have known when huge numbers of our users started adding the Twitter Facebook application and updating their Facebook status with tweets. Another sign, in hindsight, was the exponential increase in iPhone users over the last few months, which saw our traffic just sky rocket sending the average IQ on Facebook to these dizzying lows. And when people start liking Likes, you know you are really in trouble,” Zuckerberg said.
Facebook Lite is aimed at addressing a problem that has plagued Facebook ever since its launch. Despite the site’s proliferation of advanced social networking features, the vast majority of users are simply not intelligent enough to take advantage of them. The most popular activities on Facebook are staring at the screen, gawking at photos, liking Likes and poking, in order of popularity, followed closely by biting and selling friends. The Facebook Lite home page will feature a blank white screen followed ten seconds later by random photos and Likes from people who like those photos. Users will then have the option to like the Like or to poke the liker. The infamous Facebook newsfeed will be no more and the profile page has been reduced to a simple single status update.
“The reduced features in Facebook Lite are exactly what our users have been asking for. They spoke and we listened. We haven’t neglected our developers either. The new Facebook Lite API is composed of just four methods, blankScreen(), gawkPhoto(), likeLike(), and pokeUser making it really easy for anyone to become a Facebook developer. For the programmatically challenged a new widget called Facebook Lite Screen will be available, which will emulate the blank Facebook Lite home page on third party Websites,” added Zuckerberg.
The latest on Facebook’s official blog is that the trials are going well and that many Afghans, Indians and North Koreans have cancelled their Facebook accounts in favour of Lite. In anticipation of a massive interest in China, Facebook Lite has already been blocked in the Middle Kingdom even before it is available.
