Facebook is the world’s largest online social network with more than a billion users spread all across the globe, it sees massive potential in emerging markets like India where CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently spend some time with interacting with the community and officials. The company recently put in place a program called “2G Tuesdays” aimed at making employees better understand how their users access Facebook on 2G speeds in a bid to further improve the experience for users in emerging markets. The latest move involves making them switch from iPhones to Android devices.
It’s not that Facebook hates Apple and loves Google, the idea is to give employees a better sense of how users in emerging markets are using Facebook, and it goes without saying that Android smartphones are most popular in such markets because they’re affordable, iPhones are out of reach for most users.
The Independent reports that Facebook’s chief product officer Chris Cox has mandated a switch of a major chunk of his team over to Android, “just because people, when left up to their own devices, will often prefer an iPhone.”
Cox further added that what Facebook is trying to do with these moves is to build empathy within the company and to really appreciate that the people they’re building for “look less and less like us.”
The report doesn’t mention just how many Facebook employees have been made to give up their iPhones in favor of an Android smartphone but one can expect that a big number from the core development team may have made the switch.