For one hour every Tuesday, Facebook will give its staff a taste of what logging on to the platform via a 2G connection – a reality for nearly 60% of active users in Africa – is like, by enabling them to experience a slower version of the site.
Dubbed 2G Tuesdays, the initiative has been set up as a simulation to encourage employees to come up with solutions to enhance the Facebook experience for users who access the site via a slower connection on a regular basis. According to a Quartz Africa report, improving experiences for users with lower connection speeds is one of the company’s priorities.
In October, its newsfeed was optimised to allow users with a slow connection to access it quickly, while the Facebook Lite app was designed specifically for 2G. Furthermore, the social networking site hopes to have free internet beamed to some of the most remote parts of Africa via satellite by 2016.
