Instagram Lite quietly launches to find a billion more users abroad | Hacker News Reader

Instagram Lite quietly launches to find a billion more users abroad

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58 pointsjonbaer53 comments

Instagram Lite should just be the default version for everyone. I can't imagine the missing sharing of videos and direct messaging makes up the other 54/55 of the application size.

Still way smaller than the massive 541.6mb Facebook app (16 times smaller to be exact): https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/facebook/id284882215

I know a bunch of people whose phones seem to be perpetually full or nearly full. I'm surprised that Facebook hasn't seen an incentive to slim down the app to keep it out of the top few items in the 'Manage Storage' list, reducing the chance it that it gets deleted when people are scrambling to make room for more pictures or videos. Maybe they've found their users to be sufficiently hooked that it's not a risk.

If you think about it though, Facebook is many apps in one. It's a marketplace app, a social media app, a videos app, a specialty camera app... the list goes on. Sure, you can call them 'features', but for other businesses these would be entire products. Everyone complained when messenger was rolled out into its own app (now Facebook wants me to download two apps??), so maybe the size is justified. I don't personally use every feature, but I'm glad that I don't have to switch apps to use marketplace and live videos, both of which I use quite frequently.

Yea.... no thanks. It doesn't even have vital social features like looking up a past event (because pictures). I tend to have to use the website. I uninstalled the Android app and now I just use the mobile website in a browser. I do have messenger installed cause that's what I actually use.

I do the same, but without Messenger installed. Just m.facebook.com and then request desktop site.

I use an app which wraps the website up. Helps to keep the cookies at bay. Maybe.

I downloaded Facebook lite and I never noticed the lack of any of those things. I doubt most people will. The overwhelming usage is text posts, or adding photos and videos.

Well, I think it's easy to get caught up in our own use cases. There are massive user bases in other countries who rely on things like marketplace to buy and sell goods in a safe manner.

Evidently, Facebook doesn't think most people need marketplace either, given that they didn't include it in the lite version.

Wow, my first HD was 420 MB, and it fit Windows 3.1, the Office suite, and a lot of games...

Yeah, computers have come along way in the past twenty years.

My first HD was 30MB. Get off my lawn, you whippersnapper.

Amongst most my friends and my use now, the Instagram Stories is the feature we're all using all the time. I almost never even scroll through the traditional feed anymore.

The fact that they even need to release a "Lite" version of Facebook and Instagram is just a testament to how bloated and slow those apps have become.

This begs the question, why doesn't Facebook just completely redo their apps? I'm sure it wouldn't take long to achieve feature parity with the old app

> This begs the question, why doesn't Facebook just completely redo their apps? I'm sure it wouldn't take long to achieve feature parity with the old app

It's hard to tell on the internet . . . you mean this as satire, right? It would take a hilarious amount of time and money to achieve feature parity.

I don't think it would take long at all for a company the size of Facebook. They already have the core functionality implemented

Ground up rewrites often look like a good idea but rarely are in practice. Much of what looks like cruft to fresh eyes is patches to bugs. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

Maybe those bug fixes should be documented so that they don't look like cruft :)

Maybe they should have just written it right the first time! /s

They probably should but code as text has a lot of draw backs (and some benefits of course) one of which is that the only way to document a lot of edge cases is via comments in the text which people don't like and in large/long lived codebases immediately start rotting.

I've seen far too much

    // Workaround for <Foo bug> in <Browser no one has used for a decade and we haven't supported for five years>

I've often thought that code should have 'layers' that can be toggled on/off (comments and comments by category been one case), often when I'm writing code I don't want to see the comments while I'm writing it since I go back through afterwards and add them and they otherwise just get in the way, it would be nice if I could toggle them on/of rather than just folding them.

I've actually given some thought to how you'd implement it but I really need to hack up a proof of concept to see whether it's something I actually find useful (pass the sniff test).

With a js app packaged using babel, you can use the https://babeljs.io/docs/en/next/babel-preset-env.html preset to specify which browsers you want to support, and it will only transpile the features necessary to support those browsers. You can for example tell it you only want to support browsers with >0.25% of the browser market share, and it will figure out which browsers that includes and which features those browsers have.

It depends upon the execution. It can be undertaken as a parallel effort so that you stagnate the original app.

Cheaper phones simply only have space for one or two 21st century apps like Uber, Lyft, or Facebook. Saying those apps are bloated is misleading they are just built for newer Android's/iPhones. And lite apps are aimed at cheaper phones.

"21st century app" has to be the most bullshit term I have heard this week. You can build very small apps with a lot of features if you want. But when you keep pushing JavaScript technology into stuff just to rebuild what is already available on the platform (just in an "uncool" way), you end up with multiple almost 300 MB apps to share some images and text.

> But when you keep pushing JavaScript technology into stuff... you end up with multiple almost 300 MB apps to share some images and text

I would be hesitant to solely Javascript for the bloat of Instagram, and related apps. On phones, typically the WebView is used - not like using Electron where chromium + v8 is packaged with each application. A Cordova application can easily be in the single-digit MB range.

Facebook is a native app - and is 300MB+ in size. A breakdown is available here:

https://blog.timac.org/2017/0410-analysis-of-the-facebook-ap...

Mostly it comes down to the fact that app size is not a prioritization.

Agreed, expensive phones can have lots of big sized apps

Compare with ""20th century apps""; Apollo went to the moon with 36kb (kilowords) ROM, now it takes a thousand times that to hail a taxi.

(A lot of it is images, but still you have to wonder..)

What exactly is the amazing new experience that "21st century app" can offer that something running on 512 MB RAM phone cannot?

My phone is vastly more powerful than entire racks full of machines used to be. The idea that it's reasonable for it to barely be able to handle an app for getting a taxi is just ridiculous.

It's just bloated.

It also re-illustrates what we already knew- improved hardware leads to/permits code size & runtime bloat.

Isn’t this what the (mobile) web app is already? I deleted the app a couple of years ago and used the web app exclusively, it sheds much of the bloat (so far...).

You can even add a shortcut the Home Screen (at least on Firefox), and it will render without the browser chrome. Virtually indistinguishable.

even on iOS?

I thought Apple is not really thrilled about the whole PWA initiative. Most of their effort has been half-hearted [1], since it bypasses their App Store (which generates a big portion of their revenue).

[1] https://medium.com/@firt/progressive-web-apps-on-ios-are-her...

That's what I was thinking, but it's not possible to post anything on the web app.

Edit: Apparently, I'm wrong

It’s possible to post from the mobile site. I do it often from mobile Safari, Firefox, etc on iOS.

That is insane...

Why?

I do this as well on Android because I refuse to install Messenger. Works just fine.

In desktop Firefox you can fake the user agent on a per-domain basis. I do so to pretend to be on Android when visiting Instagram.com

The only feature that doesn't work is hold-to-slide a photo around in the editor.

The webapp now lets you post things, cant edit as much as you can in the native app but has basic filters etc

Because I don't like being tracked. I usually use Instagram web for the few times, I feel like using Instagram. Sounds like a PWA. even though on iOS user experience is comparable to the app, well besides not having dm's.

I wonder if this app is just a webview into their better/optimized website...sort of like a PWA with a webview over it to come across as a "native app"?

I'm traveling around Africa for 2 years, and I got Facebook Lite a few months back.

Sure, it's nice and small, and supposedly uses little data, but it hardly works at all. It was impossible to see Notifications from my business page, can't see or send messages without installing Messenger (ugh!)

Now I've deleted FB Lite, and I see no reason to ever get an FB or Insta app ever again. The web versions work OK, it just means I have to dig out my laptop.

I use mbasic.facebook.com as a web app, and that's reliable for me on some pretty terrible connections.

Does it let you send/receive messages, or does it force you to install messenger?

I haven't installed Messenger, and it doesn't force me to do so.

"can't see or send messages without installing Messenger (ugh!)" I used it for some time, it wasn't problem for me. I could message through Facebook Lite app.

Thank you for bringing up the PWA. Before Instagram didn't allow posting pictures. Just opened it and added to homescreen and it works and looks just fine. Will have it in parallel for few days, but I think Instagram is going away and I hope much of other apps as well.

Can I have a lite version that has photos in posted order, and doesn't have the evil design of the LIVE VIDEO button in the top right that looks like a DM.

Just saw an article that they are going to allow people to tag their school in their profile? FB full circle.

I feel like I'm missing something. Other than the size of the application how is the Lite version different from the original? Why wouldn't I just use Lite?

| but currently lacks the options to share videos or Direct message friends.

Thanks. Not sure how I missed that...

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