India is the second most important market for Facebook after US and the tricks of the trade are different here. Though most people affluent in English already have their accounts on Facebook, the next challenging task for it is to bring the non-English speaking audience to the social networking site. Facebook has a announced that ‘Facebook for Every Phone’ mobile application would now be available in Gujarati, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Punjabi, Bengali and Marathi, besides Hindi. The application was launched way back in July 2011 and works on all Java enabled phones. This means even those who do not have very high-end phones can take advantage of this additional feature on their Facebook app.
There are a number of Facebook users around the world who use English alphabets to write in their local languages. It is not comprehensible though every time, but approximates to what they want to convey. The availability of these languages means users can now write or sign-up in their local language. So for e.g. if you are Marathi and want to convey a message to all your Marathi friends on Facebook, you just write in Marathi and can further engage in conversations that are in Marathi and not everyone (those who do not understand Marathi) should be able to comprehend what exactly is going on in the conversation.
It’s a crucial move from Facebook as the number of Facebook mobiles is supposed to exceed the number of users on PC by a large number in near future and as everyone in India doesn’t has the luxury to own a expensive smartphone. You can download the app at d.facebook.com/install, or get it from an appstore. Steps like this will help the company stay ahead of the competition with the likes of Google Plus and Twitter.
Via: EconomicTimes