LinkedIn is the social networking giant for the professionals around the world. It has more than 500 million members and was recently acquired by Microsoft. Today LinkedIn is taking another step towards spreading its app amongst the masses. It has launched LinkedIn Lite, a 1mb android app for the places where broadband is expensive and slow. A clear reason why the launch happened in India first. The app is a strip down version of the parent app.
The app first went live in India on 18th July 2017. Moreover, LinkedIn has said that it plans to launch it in 60+ more markets across the world. Release across the world will take a couple of months.
The new app reduces the data usage by up to 80%. The loading time is fast, which is under 5 seconds. So, even if a user is in 2G network coverage he or she will receive higher page load speeds. The app features all the basic features of LinkedIn. These are jobs, news feed, profile, access to the LinkedIn network, notifications, messaging, and search. All of these features will display no heavy graphics. Moreover, there won’t be any feature which will slow down the page loads.
Currently, in India LinkedIn has over 42 million users. As the market in India is mostly on Android, there is no plan to launch the Lite version on iOS. In the developing markets, Andriod has the edge. In India, Android usage is 97% in smartphones. Hence, it is right to launch on Android first. If a user wants to use LinkedIn Lite in developing countries they can use it through the web.
There is a lot of demand in the developing markets for the social media. Moreover, a lot of revenue is generated through the markets in developing economies. Hence the focus to further intensify it and consolidate the standing. As it is evident from Facebook Lite’s growing influence. Facebook has now planned to launch Messenger Lite as well.
India is a tech savvy nation. It is high on demand for social networking sites. Moreover, it is in effect the biggest market for these social media giants in developing economies. Therefore, we are going to see a lot of activity in India. The agenda for LinkedIn Lite is the opening of economic opportunity as told by Akshay Kothari, LinkedIn’s country manager for India.
