With mobile and messaging however, it’s been the opposite. It used to be the case that businesses led technology adoption and consumers would follow. That’s why, as well as encrypting messages end-to-end so only those sending and receiving them can read them, on Viber you can hide chats on shared devices, or set a self-destruct timer to make a message disappear after a certain time period - on both sides of the conversation. Privacy and security have also become increasing concerns as our online world has opened up, which means we want our interactions to be protected. Now of course, personalization is the thing, and what could be more personal than creating your very own stickers and GIFs? We even celebrated Viber’s first wedding in 2015 with a specially created pack, inspired by two customers who lived more than 10,000 km apart but kept their relationship growing over Viber.

We introduced stickers in 2012, and 1.3 billion are now sent on average by our users each month. And that means visuals and moving content. Messaging also gives us the means to express ourselves more, well, expressively. Viber also hosts Communities for people with similar interests, and you can even run polls with your contacts to gather their opinions on life, the universe, or what the best biscuit is. All you have to do is stay on top of whatever the subject is that minute, and navigate the delicate politics of leaving a conversation. No gang of friends or colleagues is without a group chat these days. But one-to-one soon became many-to-many with group messaging. First it was calls and messages to another person. Viber’s platform exists because humans like to share. Since then, messaging hasn’t looked back, while calls and ads have become a whole new experience as more and more functionality has been introduced to provide what consumers want and businesses need. If you can make a voice call over the internet without having to get tangled up with various mobile network protocols, why not use the same technology to send text and visual content to other devices as well? This is exactly what Viber started to do a few months after its initial launch as a Voice over IP service. That’s really where messaging platforms began. Because at the same time, the smartphone was overcoming its initial limitations and starting to gain ground, while IP telephony was about to make the leap from expensive corporate luxury to accessible consumer tool.

What is viber messaging