Telecom Lead India: Social networking site Facebook
announced a facility for its users to access the site in eight Indian languages
from mobile phones. This will be rolled out in phases over the next few weeks.
“With over 50 million people in India on Facebook, we want to make sure
that everyone has a great Facebook mobile experience regardless of the device
that they choose to use,” said Facebook Country Growth Manager Kevin
D’Souza.
Facebook users can access the site by using Facebook for Every Phone mobile
application in three national languages – Hindi, Malay and Vietnamese and seven
local Indian languages – Gujarati, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Punjabi, Bengali
and Marathi.
Earlier, users could access Facebook only in English. The application was
originally launched in July 2011 and now works on more than 3600 Java-enabled
phones around the world.
India is the second largest market for the social networking website after
United States. In March, the company said it is experiencing rapid revenue
growth in markets such as Brazil and India due to rise in the number of users
and increased sales efforts in those markets.
As on December 31, 2011, Facebook had 46 million monthly active users (MAUs) in
India which was an increase of 132 percent from the previous year.
The company currently has more than 800 million monthly active users and over
350 million mobile users worldwide.
Facebook, which is in the process of coming up with its Initial Public Offer,
recently secured credit deal worth a whopping $8 billion from a consortium of
banks.
