Facebook touts the need for speed with new mobile site

Facebook announced the launch of 0.facebook.com, a new mobile site optimized for speed and efficiency. According to Facebook, the free 0.facebook.com effort includes all the key features of the social networking experience while eliminating components that complicate and slow down the process: "When using the mobile Internet, people around the world face two main challenges--sometimes the experience is too slow to be fun and the cost of data plans and understanding them can be daunting," writes Facebook Mobile product manager Sid Murlidhar on The Facebook Blog. "We have designed 0.facebook.com to help solve these two barriers and we hope that even more people will discover the mobile Internet with Facebook as a result." Murlidhar adds that while 0.facebook.com enables users to update their status, view their News Feed, comment on posts and send and reply to messages, it puts photos a click away--if users choose to view photos, data fees will apply.

The new 0.facebook.com launches across over 50 mobile operator networks in 45 countries--deals are also in the pipeline with carriers including the U.K.'s 3, Australia's Telstra and France's SFR. Murlidhar notes that more than 100 million people are actively using Facebook via mobile device--its Facebook Mobile solution is now available from more than 200 operators in 80 international markets.

In other Facebook news, the social networking giant announced a five-year strategic partnership with social gaming juggernaut Zynga, the firm behind titles like FarmVille and Mafia Wars. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed--the companies said they will collaborate to enhance the Zynga gaming experience on the Facebook platform. Zynga adds it is testing Facebook Credits in select games and will expand to more titles in the months ahead.

For more on 0.facebook.com:
- read this Facebook Blog entry

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