The public chat feature allows Viber users to view live discussions of public chat accounts and “like” specific text or photo messages.
Viber chief executive officer Talmon Marco likened the experience to watching a reality show, to maximize on the digital age’s fascination with celebrities.
“Public Chats for us is a fascinating social experiment. We are taking Viber to the next step in many ways by giving our users something new to do on the service. We are letting them address a need, which is universal and has been so for ages, and that is to follow what other people are doing,” he said in a press briefing in Taguig on Thursday.
“Public Chats, of course with the permission of those you are listening to, is allowing you to follow in a way that is really unprecedented the lives of the people you care about: celebrities, personalities, sports people, or just average group of people that have something interesting to talk about,” he added.
Currently, there are 25 active public chat accounts in the Philippines, which include personalities such as radio trio Boys Night Out, podcast hosts Becky Nights, and Manila Secrets.
Manila Secrets, which is described as a group that chats “about Manila’s hidden secrets,” is a group composed of Tim Yap, Bubbles and Paolo Paraiso, Divine Lee, and JM Rodriguez, Aiko Melendez and Aubrey Miles, among others.
Brands such as Globe, Smart and SM Supermalls also have their own chat accounts.
Marco said more local celebrities and brands are expected to open their discussions to the public, but the content is entirely up to the participants.
“Where this is going, we don’t know. That depends on where those who chat will take it and we’ll see what happens,” said Marco.
“It’s so much interesting to follow a chat than to follow posts. Chats are far more interactive and interesting,” he added.
Currently, followers of the chat accounts are not allowed to comment, but Marco said a comment feature may soon be added.
He said the feature is being introduced on a “controlled rollout” to allow the Viber team to customize and configure chat settings.
Around 300 public chats are now open globally, but Marco said interested parties can apply to start a public chat be sending a request to publicchats@viber.com.
“We’ll take a look at it, if we think it’s interesting, then we’ll give them their own public chat. Later on the objective is to really open it up to everybody,” he said.
The new feature is available for update on Android and IOS devices, and will soon be available on Viber’s desktop version.
Marco said Viber is looking to add functionality and more features to the app, while maintaining its core function of sending multimedia messages.
“Viber is about communicating and sharing with the people around you, people you care about. The public chat is really an extension of that, which are the people you care about but you don’t necessarily know,” he said.
Mobile remittances?
One of the possible features that Viber may soon adapt is a mobile remittance service.
“I think the ability to send money, which is something very interesting for the Philippine market, is definitely something we are looking at closely,” he said.
In September, Viber launched a video call service on both its desktop and mobile versions.
Viber is available for free for iPhone, Android phones and tablets, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, Blackberry 10, Windows, Windows 8, Mac, Linux, Symbian, Nokia S40 and Bada devices over 3G/4G or WiFi connections.
Viber has an estimated 209 million users worldwide, 18 million of which are located in the Philippines.
source: www.abs-cbnnews.com
