Right now everyone is trying to copy Snapchat, but on the other hand Viber has shifted back to conventionalities and has dittoed Snapchat’s main text feature that lasted for a short time.
Viber which was acquired by Rakuten three years ago for just a shade below $1 billion has only copied the core feature of Snapchat that made helped it to make a name in the industry. But Facebook has put almost all the features of Snapchat into all its apps.
Earlier today an update was made on Viber for iOS and Android that enabled the bringing of “secret chats” to the service for the very first time. Viber has also enabled the service of sending messages by setting timer just like Snapchat, Facebook, Telegram and many others. Another feature that was first pioneered by Snapchat is that a person gets an alert when the other person (whom they are talking to) takes a screen shot.
According to numbers Viber has claimed that it has more than 800 million users that are registered with them but it hasn’t actually disclosed that how much are active—this is the number that matters the most. Viber has a strong fan following and is used heavily in different parts of North Africa, Philippines and Myanmar in Asia, Latin America and some parts of the Middle East. But Viber is still far away from WhatsApp or messenger in terms of universal popularity and users.
Past few months have been kind of hectic for Viber in terms of news. Last month it made Djamel Agaoua as its CEO who was former mobile advertising executive as Talmon Marco who was the founding CEO of Viber left it sometime ago. He now runs Uber rival Juno—which is loaded with advanced features like public accounts, one-touch video calling, e-commerce button and disappearing multimedia.
While social media and messaging sites have settled in quite nicely in different parts of the world as some specific apps have solidified themselves in certain areas, Viber seems to be pushing a bit more to differentiate itself from the others. Although last year it added the feature to end-to-end encryption and hidden chats but some researchers have shown doubts about the company’s claims.
