Mobile Facebook now in 8 Indian languages

NEW DELHI: Social networking website 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, it said. “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,” Facebook’s Country Growth Manager Kevin D’Souza said in a statement. With this, 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 Javaenabled phones around the world. India is 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 per cent from the previous year. The company currently has more than 800 million monthly active users and over 350 million mobile users worldwide, the statement said. Facebook, which is in the process of coming up with its Initial Public Offer, recently secured credit deal worth a whopping USD 8 billion from a consortium of banks.