The undeniable king of social networking, Facebook, has launched nuclear counter-attacks on its competitors in the past few days, acquiring FriendFeed for a reported $50 million dollars, and covertly switching to real-time search technology.

However, its largest missile may have been revealed last night in the form of “Facebook Lite.” Specific users were greeted with a message on their home page, informing that they had been selected as a beta tester for Facebook Lite. In that same message, the ‘Book team describes the Lite version as a “faster, simpler version of Facebook.”

Thousands of users received the message, only to see it promptly disappear. The overshot was attributed to a bug and has been confirmed as a mistake. Numbers of actual beta testers will surely be much smaller.

Lucky beta testers have described the experience to Tech Crunch, with one tweeting “it looks like a simplified version of twitter with comments enabled. On 2nd though, it looks like simplified FriendFeed.” The changes do not appear to be drastic and Facebook-world-breaking as of right now.

Tech Crunch and Social Media Guide Mashable have a purported screenshot of Facebook Lite, which is a trimmed down wall page with few tabs on the side and sans the numerous boxes featuring Top Friends or statistics from your farming game application.

After purchasing FriendFeed, the ‘net exploded with rumors that Facebook Lite is a direct response to Twitter and it’s ever growing user base. That appears to not be the case, according to a new entry at Tech Crunch.  In a twist of irony, its biggest weapon may not have been intended to compete with Twitter at all.

The real reason for its development seems to be aimed at areas of the world with low internet speeds or expensive broadband connections that limit the number of users that can access the site. Facebook Lite will reportedly allow a stripped down service without the bandwidth-sucking extras. Tech Crunch reports that Facebook Lite is currently being tested in India with plans to reach China and Russia.

Facebook is leaving the door open for this latest iteration to hit the rest of the world, but nothing has been announced at that point. This beta test will be ongoing for some time before users ever see Faceboom Lite in the digital flesh.

Our Take:

Now that all the “Twitter-killer” and “this is why they bought FriendFeed” hearsay has subsided, its nice to hear the real reason behind Facebook Lite. This service has obviously been in development for quite some time. Heck, it was even being beta-tested the week before Facebook purchased FriendFeed!

Facebook certainly has gotten bogged down with numerous add-ons and applications which would prevent those with slower connections from actually using the site to expand their social network. Since that was the entire reason behind its inception, Facebook shows great forethought in offering a slimmed down version of the website.

Though I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that Facebook Lite functions a lot like Twitter. I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’!