Facebook has more that billion users but that include only 1/5 part of the world population. More than half part of the world still does not have access to social networks or any internet services for that matter. Hoping to find the market in the internet deserted areas of the world facebook has joined hands with other technology giants to make internet affordable for everyone.
Mark Zukerberg the CEO of facebook announced an initiative to connect the whole world population to internet. In his post ‘Is Internet a Human Right’ Zukerberg hinted that the social network company along with many media and technology partners found internet.org. The organization’iternet.org will work on ways to provide low cost internet to about 5 million people of the world who lack the facility.
The companies that will be joining the internet.org project include Nokia, Samsung, Qualcomm, Ericson, Mediatech and Opera. Zukerburg also said that internet.org is looking forward to add more companies and individuals who are willing to contribute for the initiative.
In his post ‘Is Connectivity a Human Right’ the Facebook’s co-founder stated that “The world economy is going through a massive transition right now. The knowledge economy is the future. By bringing everyone online, we’ll not only improve billions of lives, but we’ll also improve our own as we benefit from the ideas and productivity they contribute to the world.”
As per the post internet.org will be working on making the internet more affordable by making it more efficient to deliver data. The organization will also focus on improving the efficiency of apps so they could run on less data. The third and probably most important step in this mission would be developing a business modal to get more and more people online.
The initiative kicked up many fiery debates in the media as critics accused tech giants for playing Human Right card to spread their business. Although, we can’t deny the possibility of tech companies eyeing a big uncatered market which is full of potential we have to accept that getting that big slice of pie is not going to be an easy job.
