Viber announces new chat extensions

Wednesday, 27 June 2018 00:34 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Viber, one of the world’s leading messaging apps, announced new and innovative chat extensions, giving its one billion registered users exciting new ways to express themselves and easily manage their conversations.

Originally introduced in December 2016, Viber’s Chat Extensions enrich users’ conversations, without the need to leave the chat – from instantly finding and sharing GIFs and YouTube videos to send songs from Spotify, places to eat from Yelp and more.

Viber Shouts is a new fun way for Viber users to share messages with colorful backgrounds in chat for important updates they want to make stand out from the rest. With more than 20 message bubble background options at launch, Viber will introduce additional backgrounds globally and locally in the future.

Favorites is a new useful Chat Extension that keeps all of the user’s favorite and important GIFs, links and YouTube videos in one handy place. Users can long-tap any GIF, link or YouTube video they’ve received inside Viber and save them into their Favorites. Later on, they can easily access them using the Chat Extension inside different chats on Viber and instantly share them with a single tap.

Location is a new rich location-sharing experience with more relevant information on nearby places to instantly share in chat. The new location message includes an “Open” button of the specific location, that allows the users to choose their navigation app of choice. In terms of privacy, this feature is enabled only for users who grant Viber access to their location and the location is requested only when users actively tap on the Location Chat Extension to share it with their friends.

Since launch, Viber has partnered with over 20 content and service partners globally and locally on various Chat Extensions, such as GIPHY and Tenor for GIFs, YouTube for online video, Spotify for music streaming and others for news, entertainment, sports, and food. In the past year, Viber users accessed the various chat extensions over 4.5 billion times, making it one of the fastest growing ways of communication inside the app.

Viber Shouts, Favorites and Location chat extensions will roll out gradually around the world and will be available on the Viber mobile app on iPhone and Android.

“Viber is constantly striving to enrich the communication experience for the people who use it so passionately around the world. Introducing our three new and innovative Chat Extensions is consistent with our strategy to keep Viber as the powerful and expressive tool it is, offering exciting ways to chat in different styles and fashions. We are thrilled and confident these chat extensions, along with our ongoing commitment for simplicity and privacy, will continue to make the experience on Viber unique and exceptional for everyone,” said Djamel Agaoua, CEO of Viber.