Viber, the VoIP and messaging app recently acquired by Rakuten for $900 million, has today announced that it has crossed 100 million active users and more than 360 million unique registered users
Based on its number of online users, and those available via push notification, Viber estimates more than 200 million people are reachable via the platform at any time.
Much of this growth comes down to platform availability, as Viber has worked hard to stretch across multiple platforms, including desktop, iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and more.
“As usage increases, our priority remains the same—introducing features, adding more platforms, and improving Viber with every new version,” CEO Talmon Marco said in a statement. “This is exactly what we’ve done with the new Viber Desktop, and we’re really excited for users to try it out.”
For those 100 million users, Viber today rolled out an updated desktop application, promising a new aesthetic, with a particular focus on the service’s popular stickers. Viber stickers these are basically emoticons on steroids that are downloaded in sets – some of which are free and others cost a few bucks. Now that the new Viber for desktop is released users can dock a sticker menu alongside their conversations and even search for stickers within the app.
The Viber desktop app has seen a design overhaul as well and offers upgraded video quality and performance. The Viber support site is also now available in Spanish and Portuguese
The messaging service got its start on mobile devices, providing some competition for WhatsApp, Skype, and other VoIP companies. In May 2013, Viber made the leap to desktops, offering messaging and phone service on PC and Mac computers.Still, its popularity is often overshadowed by WhatsApp, which, early this year, was bought by Facebook for $16 billion.
The messaging service world is particularly cutthroat nowadays with giants like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger fighting the likes of Skype and BlackBerry Messenger. Apple has its iMessage, Google has its Hangouts and now Viber. The end user gets a lot of cool services for free though so we’re grateful.
Have a look at the Video
A Snippet of the Desktop App
