• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, April 6, 2017

Following Facebook’s lead, Twitter is rolling out a “Lite” version of its flagship app.

Around the world, the struggling social network knows that slow mobile networks, costly data plans, and lack of storage on mobile gadgets are all reasons why people may be missing out on its service.

Indeed, “While smartphone adoption grew to 3.8 billion connections by the end of 2016, 45% of mobile connections are still on slower 2G networks,” Patrick Traughber, a Product Manager at Twitter, notes in a new blog post. (Traughber based his statement on data from the GSMA.)

Trying to work around those barriers, Twitter Lite minimizes data usage, loads quickly on slower connections, and takes up less than 1MB on mobile device.

The new service is also “resilient on unreliable mobile networks,” according to Traughber.

In tests, Traughber and his team have clocked Lite’s launch times at 30% faster speeds than Twitter’s existing app.

Lite also includes many of the same features as Twitter’s main offering, includes a timeline, notifications, profiles, and the ability to send tweets and direct messages.

Twitter on Thursday also debuted a data saver mode, which should reduces the amount of mobile data used.

To help popularize Lite in India specifically, Twitter is partnering with Vodafone, the company announced on Thursday.

Following efforts to make its flagship app easier to access around the world, Facebook launched a streamlined version of its Messenger app -- “Messenger Lite” -- late last year.