Apparently so. Their beta version of a site called “Facebook Lite” was inadvertently announced to a small group of Facebook users to beta-test.
The Lite page disappeared shortly after the announcement, but not before bloggers had caught on to the beta site, and posted their initial take on it along with screenshots of the site.
Facebook’s Director of Communications, Brandee Barker, in an e-mail response to media, said that Facebook Lite was “temporarily exposed to a larger set of users by mistake.” CNet quoted her e-mail as saying “We have not opened up access to lite.facebook.com to all users at this time.”
Facebook Lite appears to be an attempt by Facebook to directly take on microblogging site Twitter, which has grown in rapid popularity over the last year. Twitter now reports close to 30 million users and recently redesigned its front page.
If its a Facebook-vs-Twitter war, Facebook is sitting pretty.
Facebook recently went through a $200 million fundraising process, and earned upwards of $500 million in revenues this year.
Over 250 million users are signed up to use Facebook, and while Twitter is growing fast, it has 30 million users and is generating almost no income.
The social networking giant announced yesterday that it had purchased FriendFeed for $50 million. FriendFeed describes itself as a service that “offers a fun and interactive way to discover and discuss information among friends,” a service very similar to Facebook.
Yesterday, Facebook also launched a real-time search service. Both moves are seen as being directly aimed at Twitter.
Industry analysts say that Twitter has a stronger mobile presence, but even that is being challenged by Facebook’s recent mobile efforts.
Facebook attempted to buy out Twitter last year, but the deal fell through in November 2008, when the microblogging site turned down the mostly-stock offer due to concerns over Facebook’s actual stock price.
