Viber, the company most well known for its messaging app, has recently announced an update to the chat platform that was rather interesting. This update creates the potential for limitless publication conversations.
Most of the most well known messaging apps, Viber included, began their early business status with person-to-person messaging capabilities as well as the functionality for small group chats. However, the push has been ongoing for something on a much larger scale. Imagine, if you will, old school message boards and you will be headed in the right direction.
The most recent unveiling by Viber was Viber Communities. These are basically chat spaces, which are public and have no set limits with regards to how many people can participate that the same time. In essence, it would be possible, though we do not know if it has yet been attempted, to have one billion users inside a single chat space.
Back in 2016, we saw the launch of the Public Accounts for Businesses and Brands, and the Viber Community is somewhat of an extension of that. PABB allowed organizations to broadcast their messages in either a one on one scale or on a grander mass message to many users at the same time.
Facebook also offers the networking scheme of Facebook Groups, however, there has been talk of extending that reach into niches, specific to topic, in public chat groups, previously. In 2014, they launched a standalone “Rooms” app, where users themselves could create their own anonymous chat rooms, specific to topics. However, that did not last long. Again, in 2016, Facebook tried another experiment with public chats in the Messenger app. This, as well, did not seem to be a viable, permanent application for Facebook.
Viber, however, has a particular benefit, unique to their own platform that Facebook does not have. In order to limit the amount of info that is shown to other users, only a profile photo is shown, along with the name. The user can choose to change one or both, anytime they deem necessary. That kind of anonymity just is not possible on the Facebook platform.
Get Viber Apps
Another chat app, known as Telegram, has also extended its own limit on super groups from one thousand, to five thousand, which was accomplished in 2016. This made groups viewable to the public. Apparently, that limit for the same groups stands now at roughly 100,000 people.