VivaCell-MTS, “Mobile TeleSystems” OJSC announced the launch of “Facebook SMS” service, through which users can now communicate on Facebook without using internet traffic.
On activating the service, users will get messages, wall posts, comments, friend requests and a host of other notifications via SMS. One can also update is/her status and perform a number of other actions by sending the corresponding request to 32665 number.
The notifications will be sent to user from numbers starting with 32665 and users need to reply to that specific message to respond.
The notifications received via Facebook SMS service are free of charge, while the price for each response message or request sent ot 32665 short number is AMD 4 (VAT included).
Users need to activate text messages from the “Mobile” link in their “Accont Settings” to activate the service. But, users need to add their phone number in their account information first.
Three (3UK) announced that its customers can now browse 0.facebook.com without incurring the standard data charge.
0.facebook.com is a stripped-down, text version of the popular social networking site Facebook. It is designed and optimized for speed and performance with minimal bandwidth usage. At 0.facebook.com, users can do everything that doesn’t requires graphics like updating status, view newsfeed, messaging and adding comments etc.
3 is offering its customers access to this stripped-down version of Facebook completely free of charge. If users click through to photos or videos, they will be prompted that they are now going to normal Facebook and standard charges will be applied when the user leave 0.facebook.com.
“At Three, we want to make the mobile internet easy and affordable for everyone,” says Charlotte Blanchard Director of Products & Services at Three. “We are delighted to work with Facebook to bring one of the most visited mobile websites to our customers for free. We have the only 100% 3G network in the UK so that we can provide our customers with the very best experience of the mobile internet”
The service is available from today.
Facebook is going on a launching spree. Word has it that the world’s biggest social network has revealed the launching of a stripped-down, text-only version of its mobile site called Facebook Zero.
According to Robin Wauters on techcrunch, Facebook’s Vice President of Mobile and International Expansion at Chamath Palihapitiya, outlined the mobile version of Facebook at the Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona.
Wauters was able to grab an image of the presentation Mr. Palihapitiya.
According to the BBC, Facebook said the new site “omits data intensive applications like photos,” and Facebook spokesperson commented on the app saying, “We are discussing it… as an option to make Facebook on the mobile web available to everyone, anywhiere and allow operators to encourage more mobile internet usage.”
Facebook has recently said that they have more than 100 million mobile users and this news shows that they are really taking it seriously.
It may be noted that Facebook have also launched a strip-down, basic version of Facebook called Facebook Lite for people with slow bandwith, especially in the developing countries.
Visiting the zero.facebook.com using mobile shows a message saying “Sorry, your carrier does not support zero.facebook.com.” The app may have already been launched, but operators have yet to sign up.
This version can be a boon for many where data services aren’t working well or traffic to regular Facebook is clogged.
Let’s wait and see how this new app turns out to be. Facebook for sure is working hard to make its products and service suit it’s users’ needs.
