In order to enhance its offerings for India, its second largest market in the world, Facebook is rolling out Reactions – an extension of the Like button – on Facebook Lite. It is also introducing local camera effects designed for India.
Facebook Lite, which was launched keeping countries like India in mind, makes it easier for people to access Facebook on slower network connections, counts India as one of the top countries.
“We continue to make improvements to these products so people in India can connect,” Facebook said in a statement on Wednesday. It added that conversations on Facebook Lite can be enhanced through Reactions including “Love”, “Haha”, “Wow”, “Sad” and “Angry.”
Since the global rollout of Facebook Reactions in 2016, there have been 300 billion reactions on Facebook posts. The most popular reaction is Love, making up more than half of all of reactions.
“The tools that we have announced today are just the beginning of how we want to help people in India have more creative ways to share directly from the Facebook experience,” said Adit Vaidya, product manager at Facebook told ET.
He added that the company is also excited that reactions is launching in FB Lite. “It is a great way to express empathy and how you feel,” he said.
Apart from the frames and effects that come standard in the Facebook camera, the company has designed several custom effects for India — such as the expression of Namaste as well as capture geo-specific experiences in Delhi, Mumbai, Goa, and other places.
“India is a very important country to Facebook, and we’re proud to have more than 184 million monthly active people in India who use Facebook to connect with their friends and family, and to build supportive communities online and offline,” the statement added.
Talking about the WhatsApp for which India is the largest market with 200 million users, Matt Steinfeld, who is part of Communications for WhatsApp at Facebook said, “We want to make sure that WhatsApp is working as effectively as possible for this country and so we are listening very carefully to customer feedback, the apps works in multiple languages, in different kinds of mobile networks, including lower end smartphones and things like that.”
Steinfeld added that evaluating the launch of the payment option in WhatsApp. “As more and more folks are coming online, with digital india and other efforts that’s something we are looking at very closely as we have said in the past digital commerce is an area we will be looking at in the coming months and years,” he said.
SOurce: ET Tech