So Facebook has finally felt the threat from Twitter? Why is Facebook trying to compete with all the social networking sites?

Facebook has started testing a new service tailored for mobiles and slow internet connections.

They are currently testing a simplified version of its social network service aimed at countries where Internet bandwidth is limited

According to Facebook, the test invitation was sent to a larger number of users 'by mistake'.

A lot of the current users began trying to sign up to the service without success.

Below is a snap shot of the new look of Facebook Lite.

A Facebook spokesman said,

'We have not opened up access to lite.facebook.com to all users at this time.

'People who are not part of the test and are trying to access "Lite" will be directed to Facebook.com as usual."

The site is currently on trial in India and there are plans to extend this to Russia and China.

A statement made by Facebook said the new service would be a "faster, simpler version similar to the Facebook experience you get on a mobile phone".

"Facebook Lite is a fast-loading, simplified version of Facebook that enables people to make comments, accept friend requests, write on people's walls, and look at photos and status updates," the statement continued.

"We are currently testing Facebook Lite in countries where we are seeing lots of new users coming to Facebook for the first time and are looking to start off with a more simple experience."

Industry experts are seeing the development as the latest move from Facebook to take on Twitter. The question is, are they going to be able to compete with Twitter even though they are the largest social networking sites? I mean we are talking about instant messaging and having people follow you as they do on Twitter. Twitter has had a great start to this, and has a tremendous amount of users in such a short period of time.

The one advantage Twitter has is, it has celebraties using it, which obviously means fans signing up to follow them, bringing them more users

Facebook have more than 250 million active users, although more than 70% of these are in Europe and North America. Twitter has about 45 million.

In developing countries, where the infrastructure for broadband is limited, mobile phones are emerging as the dominant way for the internet to develop. An improved version of Facebook that loads and runs effectively on a mobile would enable the firm to expand into these markets.

The news of Facebook Lite comes just days after Facebook acquired content-sharing service FriendFeed.

The service offers a "real-time" search engine that lets users know what is happening currently on any given subject.

The purchase caught many industry watchers by surprise, even though the two companies had been talking on and off for the past two years.

I have to say Twitter has a lot of businesses using it to have their customers following the. Also the feature to be able to find anyone and follow them without having to be a friend as appealing to a lot of us. As with Facebook it is mainly friends and family, basically the people you know.

So who is going to be the winner, Facebook or Twitter? Do let me know who you use or like by leaving your comments below.