Facebook, the leading social media platform in the world, has now launched a new stripped down version of its app aimed at users in new, emerging markets.

Back in January, Facebook confirmed it was testing a new Android app and now it is rolling the new Lite version out across countries in Asia. Soon it will follow this release with a rollout in other parts of the world including Latin America, Europe and Africa.

Facebook Lite only uses 1 megabyte of storage space, making it much smaller than its big brother which currently takes up around 25 megabytes of storage on your smartphone. The new app is designed to quickly load in areas with slow mobile Internet and to run on phones with far less storage space compared to many of the phones found here in the states.

"In many areas, networks can be slow and not able to support all the functionality found in Facebook for Android. Facebook Lite was built for these situations, giving people a reliable Facebook experience when bandwidth is at a minimum," says Vijay Shankar, product manager for Facebook Lite.

Users of the app will be able to do basic tasks such as update their status, post pictures, get notifications and even scroll through their newsfeed. However, some of the more advanced features such as viewing video will not be available due to the data requirements.

This move comes as a part of the push made by Facebook to extend its reach into emerging markets around the globe and is highlighted by its Internet.org project that gives users in certain countries access to some mobile services at no cost.

The user-base for mobile devices has been growing fast in emerging markets, particularly in the smartphone space where a number of low cost devices have been launched. For example, almost 80 percent of smartphone subscriptions added between 2015 and 2020 are expected to come from Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, according to Ericsson.

Facebook is no stranger to emerging markets. Already, the social media giant has a high user base in many new markets. For instance, Indonesia is currently the third largest market for mobile Facebook worldwide.

By the end of 2016, India is expected to surpass the United States as having the largest population of mobile phone Facebook users, according to research by eMarketer.

No doubt, this latest move by Facebook is the social media leader's attempt to continue to extend its global reach and maintain its current status as the undisputed leader in the social media space.