TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Say what? Eavesdropping on conversations with Viber
Party line: Viber is the one extending invitations to celebrities and brands to form chat rooms
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Party line:: Viber is the one extending invitations to celebrities and brands to form chat rooms. Once set, chat room admins can then invite participants who are members of the organization. (Mariel Grazella) (Mariel Grazella)
P
span class="caption">Party line: Viber is the one extending invitations to celebrities and brands to form chat rooms. Once set, chat room admins can then invite participants who are members of the organization. (Mariel Grazella)
Viber, an instant messaging application, is turning up the vibe by introducing Public Chats, a feature that allows users to listen in to group conversations among their favored musicians and novelists.
The feature was introduced to get more users on board the app, known for its text and voice messaging abilities.
Viber users can access Public Chats by tapping on the 'Public' tab on the app. A list of Public Chat rooms will then appear,and users can 'Follow' the chat rooms they are keen on. Currently, there are at least 18 chat rooms featuring international celebrities, like DJ Paul van Dyk and local act, Bottlesmoker.
In the beta version of Public Chats, Viber is the one extending invitations to celebrities and brands to form chat rooms. Once set, chat room admins can then invite participants who are members of the organization.
Paul Van Dyk's chat room, for example, has nine participants including fellow DJ, Paul Thomas.
Users can then follow a chat room to check out the participants' conversations, such as Thomas wishing van Dyk good luck on van Dyk's performance in Mexico. Followers, however, are locked from joining in or commenting in the chat room.
Windy Ariestanty, book writer and editor, manages the chat room 'Windy & GagasMedia Group', the latter a book publisher. This chat room describes itself as a 'tribe of creators' made up of other writers, such as Moammar Emka and Christian Simamora.
'We use the Public Chat room to share our knowledge on and experience in writing and publishing. We usually decide upon a topic and meeting time before we all start chatting publicly,' she said.
She added that unlike other social media platforms, Public Chats allowed for longer discussions. This, she added, was suitable when participants in the chat room shared writing tips or insight on how royalties worked to their followers, who number around 350.
'Group participants and I are on other social media platforms, but those platforms do not really facilitate lengthy discussions because Twitter, for example, only allows for 140 characters,' she pointed out.
Hence, Windy & GagasMedia acts as a venue to help budding novelists. However, Bottlesmoker, a Bandung-based electronic-pop band, uses Public Chats to connect with and inform their fans of gig schedules.
'Fans also get to hear how we discuss things internally,' Yulius Iskandar, the band's general manager, said.
Bottlesmoker's Public Chats room, with around 146 followers, is also filled with photos of other musicians, like David Naif, posing with Bottlesmoker's latest album.
Yulius added that although their presence in Public Chats was intended to give fans a sneak peak at the band's daily ramblings, the band was still careful to not let too much information leak out.
'We keep our talks to new album releases, besides sharing photos related to the band. But we avoid sharing private information, plus we make sure that our chats are clean of negative content,' he said.
Followers can flag conversations which they deem inappropriate and Viber has introduced new functions which allow chat room participants to delete comments already shared.
Mark Hardy, chief marketing officer of Viber, pointed out the messaging application launched the Public Chats feature to grab a set of new audience.
'The user appetite to share more and more is common the world over. And other social networks are limited in what they can facilitate,' he noted.
Viber faces tough competition from WhatsApp, Line, KakaoTalk, BlackBerry Messenger, and WeChat with regards to Indonesia. Line and KakaoTalk provide brands and public personalities with official accounts through which they can share updates, photos, and even vouchers to users that follow them.
A study by Nielsen shows that 79 percent of smartphone users surveyed still chose BlackBerry Messenger to chat, followed by WhatsApp at 57 percent and Line at 30 percent.
Meanwhile, Indonesia is Viber's second-largest market in Southeast Asia. Thailand takes first place while Singapore is in third.
'We have three million unique users in Indonesia, and all these Viber users are able to follow Viber Public Chats rooms,' he pointed out.
Viber itself has its own Public Chats rooms under the names Viber Events, with at least 370,000 followers, and Purple Group, with more than 183,000 followers.
However, Hardy pointed out that 'high-quality calls and text messages will always be important to us', as for their users.
'We are mobile first, but also multimedia. The possibilities are endless,' he added.
