The Facebook Lite home page -- might be liter than air, to hold up those balloons. (Screenshot by HowStuffWorks.com)

I’m sure some  (though not all) of the people who wanted Facebook to drop its combined all-in-one super home page are going to be happy when they see Facebook Lite. So far, according to BBC News and Rafe Needleman at CNET, the preview is available in the United States and in India at the moment, so if you don’t live in one of those two countries, you can’t see it yet. But if you’re one of those currently eligible, point your browser to http://lite.facebook.com and take a look.

I know, fewer calories, right? OK, I’m kidding, but those of you who wanted a simpler Facebook page with just posts from your friends and fewer bells and whistles may like this revised layout. There are no third-party applications on Facebook Lite. The BBC said it’s designed to help people in developing countries with slower Internet connections use the site. And that’s good, because the news agency quotes Facebook as saying 70 percent of the site’s subscribers are from countries other than the United States.

The site loads much faster, and Needleman said he’d switch permanently over to the new version. I still haven’t decided yet. I like seeing my bookmarked applications, but basically eliminate all the others that show up in my news feed.

Just a few minutes ago, I got a notice in my e-mail inbox from Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, telling me that the social networking site‘s terms of service have changed. A site’s terms of service basically tell you what you can and can’t do on a Web site. Steven Musil of CNET took a look at some of the changes.

In very basic terms, Twitter says it has the right to reproduce and display your content, but the content itself is yours. In displaying and distributing that content though, Twitter says it has the right to do that via application programming interfaces, or APIs. That means that people who make Twitter applications can show your content because they’re using Twitter’s API.

The new ToS discuss what constitutes spam and abusive behavior on the site, and say that Twitter is considering using advertising, which isn’t a new declaration.

You can read the new terms of service if you like, or just check out the overview on Twitter’s blog.

In the meantime, if you’re interested in learning more, take a look at these links:

How Online Social Networks Work
How Twitter Works
How Facebook Works

Update: For several days now I have been receiving comments from people explaining that their Facebook accounts have been switched over to Facebook Lite, apparently without their asking, and they cannot switch back to using the older version of the site. I don’t know what’s causing this behavior, nor do I know how to make it stop.

After days of being asked to change people’s accounts back and remove Facebook Lite, I feel compelled to point out that HowStuffWorks.com is not affiliated with Facebook, doesn’t represent Facebook and cannot make changes to your Facebook account.

Thank you all for your understanding.

Update (April 21, 2010): Facebook Lite has been shut down. MG Siegler wrote in TechCrunch yesterday that Facebook has decided to end its experiment.