Communities on Viber are growing and evolving all the time, offering you exciting opportunities to grow and engage with your audience.

As community superadmins and admins, you can do more in communities – from making it easier for people to add new members to your community, to helping them make safe connections.

Read more about Viber Communities in the previous posts in the series:

Community Insights: Measure the Success of Your Community
Your time to shine: Manage, grow and engage a Viber Community!
Get Started with Your Very Own Viber Community!

Invite new people to your community

We know how important it is to bring new members to your community, so that’s why we have updated the way to invite and add new people.

Anyone can add new members to a community simply by tapping on the share button at the top of the community screen and selecting up to 50 members to add to the community at a time.

Bring new members through virality

Your community could go viral throughout Viber when your members forward a message from your community to any of their friends, groups, or other communities. Every forwarded message has a label with your community name on it, so everyone who sees it knows where the message came from, and can tap the community name to join.

Help community members message privately and safely

The members of your community can chat between themselves in hidden-number chats, and stay safe, as they don’t share phone numbers.

As a community admin or super-admin you can choose whether you want to allow your members to message you 1on1. Your members will be able to send you hidden-number chats, meaning that neither of you can see each other’s phone number.

You can leave the 1on1 chat at any time and delete all of the messages you sent. You can also choose to block individual members from messaging you, either by not accepting their initial message, or by blocking them from inside the chat at any time.

Learn all about hidden-number chats in this blog.

Engage with your members with polls

Polls in communities are a great way to get your members opinions on any question you may ask, without being flooded with comments. Polls are quick and simple to set up inside a community, and you can watch how members vote in real-time.

Learn more about polls here.

Manage your community from your computer

You can manage your community from the convenience of Viber on your computer. Add new members, create polls, send messages, block members, reply to hidden-number chats, and more. Viber on your computer is fully synced with Viber on your phone, so you can continue managing your community seamlessly.

Take these ideas and enjoy taking your community to the next level!

Communities are a safe place for you to share your interests with new people, and take part in a conversation with them about common passions. They are a great way to build your networks and maybe even make new friends!

To help you engage with new people in a simple and safer way, we are happy to introduce Hidden-number Chats – an extra private way for Community members to chat directly, without the need to exchange or expose their phone numbers.

Usually, when you want to chat with someone new on Viber, you have to exchange your private phone number or add them as a contact in your phone book. In a Community you don’t have access to other member’s phone numbers, and you may not want to give your private number to someone you don’t know at all.

When you start a Hidden-number Chat in a Community, neither your phone number nor the phone number of the person you are talking to are visible, safeguarding your privacy. All both of you see is the name and photo you chose for your Viber profile.

Start a Hidden-number Chat

If you want to message a member of a Community who is not a contact, you can do so either by tapping their photo in a Community message, or from the members list in the Community info screen.

When you tap on another member’s name, you will see a pop-up with their photo, Viber user name, and the option to send them a message. There is no option to call them, and their phone number is not shown on the screen. Get started by tapping on Message.

Control the private chats you receive

You are in control of the chats you receive through a Community.

When you are sent a message by someone in a Community, you can choose whether to accept it. When a message is sent to you, you will see a pop-up with the name of the person who has sent you the message, your mutual Communities and the option to see the message or block it.

At any point, only you can decide you want to share your phone number in the new chat you are part of.

Even more – as a member, or superadmin and admin or you can decide whether other members of a Community can send you hidden-number chats. All you need to do is open the Community info screen and tap OFF for receiving hidden-number chats. With this off, no one from that Community will be able to send you a message.

So go ahead, make friends with people like you today!

If you are a perfectionist like we are, you will know how that one teeny tiny typo in a text message you’ve just sent can totally ruin your day. You could delete the whole message, but that does seem a bit extreme for that one word.

Ordinarily you would let it go, this is text after all, mistakes are pretty normal when your fingers are flying across the keypad, and auto-correct does its thing. But not this time…

Introducing Viber’s latest feature – Edit Messages. Now you can edit the message, and keep on chatting.

How? Simply long tap on the message, choose “Edit”, and your original text will appear in the input area waiting for you to edit. Tap send and there you go, you’ve fixed it.

Embarrassment averted

Even better, when you edit a message, it will slot back into its original place in the chat, so that your conversation continues smoothly, as though the interruption never happened.

Your recipients will only be able to see that something has changed by the new “Edited” label on the bottom of the message, and the new timestamp which will show the time you edited the message, rather than when you wrote it the first time.

Of course, if the whole message still looks wrong, you can still choose to delete the message for everyone in the chat at any time, and start all over again.

Get this super-handy new feature on Android when you update to the latest version of the app today. Coming soon on iPhone.

Update your Viber app now: https://vb.me/e0c99f

Bonus: Check out these Viber hacks: https://vb.me/fb53d1

Viber’s Chat Extensions add so much to your chats. From helping you to find and share the perfect GIFs and YouTube videos, to Spotify songs, Yelp spots and more. Once you have started using Chat Extensions, you have rarely stopped. Our newest Chat Extensions offer even more fun ways to express yourself and share the things you love with friends.

Make your messages more colorful with Shouts

There are messages, and then there are Messages. Shouts is perfect for the times you want your message to stand out in one-on-one chats, groups or communities. Choose from 20 colorful backgrounds  (more to come) to immediately make your message stand out in a stream of messages. A Shout takes seconds to create, but their impact will last way longer.

Resend your Favorite GIFs (and more) again and again easily

You’ve found that perfect GIF, the one you just know you’ll want to send time after time. Or, you have a link you need to keep close by to share inside any chat. Now it’s super easy. Save any GIF, web link or video that you really liked by long pressing on it, and create a collection of your favorite stuff. You can easily access this collection from the Favorites Chat Extension inside any chat, so the next time you need that special GIF, it is waiting for you to instantly share.

Share your whereabouts and more with the new, improved, Location extension

Don’t just share your location with your friends on Viber, use the Location Chat Extension to discover more relevant information about nearby places. Send them details about where you are, and what there is to do. The location you share is sent in a specially formatted message, with a quick-access button to any mapping app of your choice.

Note: We continue to safeguard your privacy. This feature is only enabled for users who have granted Viber access to their location. The location is only requested when you tap on the Chat Extension to share it with friends.

These new Chat Extensions will roll out in the coming days for all users, all around the world, on iPhone and Android.

Get Viber to send colorful messages that really stand out.