2G Tuesdays aims to close the "empathy gap" between Silicon Valley and emerging markets. (Photo : REUTERS)
Facebook is introducing “2G Tuesdays,” a new initiative that gives employees a chance to experience the app using an incredibly slow connection.
The “2G Tuesdays” aims to close the "empathy gap" between Silicon Valley and emerging markets such as India and Kenya struggle with slow internet speeds. It also help better empathize, understand such markets, and develop the site’s feeds for audiences where 4G is not available.
Facebook employees will have the option of working at 2G speeds for an hour every Tuesday morning, while an hour is no comparison to living with 2G all the time. The program does not last all day, and is opt-in.
Facebook engineering director Tom Alison said that 2G connection tested his patience as the site loads really slow. Employees will be able to see places that need product improvement, as well as those they have made a lot of progress.
For many in the US and other developed nations, it is easy to take for granted the faster 3G and 4G connections that give seamless streaming video and easy Internet access. Facebook said people living in underdeveloped countries are coming online at "a staggering rate" using much slower 2G connections, where a one single web page can take over two minutes to load, CNET reported.
Alison and his team of emerging-markets engineers dedicate so much time reworking Facebook's News Feed to optimize it for super-slow network speeds. To check the progress of their work, they regularly use phones that simulate 2G and actually take trips to places like India and Kenya to get a better understanding of how people there use the product.
Facebook has also its internet.org program to help bring connectivity to more of the world. Earlier this month, Facebook reported some of the updates and improvements that it has made for the app in emerging markets. It includes a “Lite” version of its Facebook app, targeted at markets where internet speeds were slow and should help with loading times, according to Ubergizmo.
