The net went crazy this week when Facebook let the cat about of the bag about its new service, Facebook Lite. According to Facebook the new service is aimed for mobiles and more areas with slow connection speeds i.e. the developing economies. Although Facebook boasts 250 million users worldwide, over 70% of those are based in Europe or North America where broadband internet is common place.

In developing countries where infrastructure for broadband is limited, mobiles phone are fast becoming the most attractive way of developing the internet. Take Pakistan as an example who is seeing 2 – 3 million new mobiles being registered every month. These economies present a significant growth opportunity for anyone who can get a foot hold early, as Twitter already are in the process of doing.

With the word out everyone is rushing to try and reach conclusions about what Facebook Lite is. The speculation has been fuelled by the rivalry that has grown between Facebook and Twitter, as to who is actually the hottest social media property.

It has to be said that screen shots of the new application do look suspiciously like Twitter.

So are Facebook trying to copy twitter? Realistically, no, not at the moment anyway. The site is aimed a countries with huge population centres and poor internet infrastructure. Think about how slow full Facebook is on dial up speed connections. The fact that testing has been based in India also goes a long way to support this conclusion.

So are we likely to see much of Facebook Lite in the UK over the coming months? Probably not as the plan is to roll the application out to Russia and China next. It may be possible that in the future Facebook Lite is released to the rest of the world for people who want speed over functionality but I wouldn’t believe the hype that this is a ‘’twitter killer’!

In recent months the Search Engines business has become a little more difficult for Google with the release of Microsoft Bing, the Microsoft / Yahoo deal and newer players to the market such as the revamped Ask Jeeves and Wolfram Alfa. Google also faced competition from Facebook with their acquisition of the much heralded Friend Feed, praised for its ‘real time search’ engine.

In many ways although Google have been dominant in market share, when it comes to innovation they have consistently been a poor performer, especially over the last few months. Back in May Google Founder Larry Page even admitted that they had fallen behind the likes of Twitter that boasts 45 million users worldwide.

However today Google lifted the lid on its answer to all of the above, Google Caffeine, as it has been knick named. The change lies under the hood of Google and as such we will not see any change to the way that Google looks. Although still in testing phase, it is the beginning of a major change to the architecture of Google providing the “first step in improving the speed, accuracy and comprehensiveness of search results".

The Golden Goose of the Search engines has always been relevance. This is the reason why real time search is such a popular concept. Its lets you know what is happening right now on any given subject. That is what Google promise to offer with Google Caffeine.

While only in testing at the moment this new development promises to put Microsoft’s Bing in the shade. The trouble with Bing is that is it an alternative to something that users are happy with. Can Google deliver on its promise of something new?

Why not try for yourself and let us know www2.sandbox.google.com