Facebook Mobile guns for more than 100 million users with Zero

Although Facebook has reached 100 million users through its mobile apps and sites, the social network has even bigger ambitions. The company gave a quick glimpse at Zero, a spare mobile version of the site that cuts out bandwidth intensive applications like Photos, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today.

Facebook’s mobile team has been posting impressive numbers; one out of every four users of the site accesses it through a mobile device. But 300 million users have yet to try Facebook through a phone because there are a plethora of devices and wireless carriers to work with before the site can be easy and accessible. This may be particularly important in developing countries where phones are becoming a primary access point to the Internet.

The service will launch over the next few weeks, and comes on the heels of Facebook Lite, a similarly spartan non-mobile edition of the site for users in emerging markets where there is slower Internet access.