By. Antonio Nichols | @AntonioBNJr

With social media platforms across the board developing more efficient Lite versions of their websites and applications, LinkedIn has finally jumped on the bandwagon. LinkedIn users in India will be the first to try out the Lite version of the popular social media platform. India is the perfect place to premiere the new version, as it is the second largest market for mobile phones only to China. 

Photo: Digital Trends

LinkedIn Lite is one in a long line of scaled down versions of social media platforms. Facebook initially led this forward charge and on the eve of its transition to the Microsoft team, LinkedIn has followed suit. This launch in India is most likely a direct result of people needing to access the platform easier due to low connectivity as well as the disadvantage of phone and data availability. With 37 million LinkedIn users residing in India, this became the opportunity for LinkedIn to begin to truly begin localizing their products. In fact, in the spirit of localization, the site was actually built mainly by Indian engineers.

Photo: The Economic Times

This Lite version of LinkedIn boasts a homepage that only takes up 150KB of data while the other pages are only around 70KB. According to Akshay Kathari, the company's country manager,  the site loads “four times faster” and provides a better experience for users in both urban and rural areas with “patchy networks”.

Photo: GameNGuide

This effort to localize in order to maximize its reach is not the only new development that LinkedIn has in the works. With LinkedIn Lite rolling out in the next few weeks, the new products will continue to keep the social media platform competitive in an industry where innovation is everything. Two of the new products that LinkedIn will be premiering in the near future are LinkedIn Placements and a Starter pack function for businesses new to LinkedIn.

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