Viber is an instant messaging and VoIP platform created by Talmon Marco and Igor Magazinnik in 2010, acquired by Japanese eCommerce giant Rakuten in a deal worth $900 million. Viber generates revenues via Viber Out, which allows users to call friends, family, or colleagues in 60 countries around the world using VoIP (charged at $5.99/month); Viber for Business, an advertising solution for businesses who want to connect with their target audience through instant messaging and through Viber stickers.
History of Viber
Viber is an instant messaging and VoIP platform created by Talmon Marco and Igor Magazinnik in 2010.
At the time, Marco was in a long-distance relationship and noted that communicating with his girlfriend in Hong Kong while based in New York City was rather expensive. This inspired him to find a cheaper alternative.
He reached out to entrepreneur and businessman Igor Magazinnik whom he met while serving in the Israeli Defence Forces. Before establishing Viber, the pair created P2P file sharing service iMesh which would ultimately provide the capital necessary to launch their new venture.
Once in operation, Viber was funded exclusively by friends and family for the first two years. The pair also hired developers in Cyprus and Belarus to keep costs low. The app was immediately successful, with the iOS version receiving 350 million downloads in the first six months. Viber users could easily call each other and synchronize contacts with their cell numbers. This was in stark contrast to competitors such as Skype that required users to create a buddy list of registered contacts.
Marco and Magazinnik intended for Viber to remain free. However, several revenue generation strategies were implemented after it was acquired in 2016.
Following is a look at each.
Viber Out
Viber Out allows users to call friends, family, or colleagues in 60 countries around the world using VoIP. The company notes that collectively, these countries represent more than 75% of the global population.
To access the service, users receive a one-week free trial to make unlimited calls. Thereafter, Viber will charge $5.99/month.
Alternatively, users can purchase pay-as-you-go credit to make international calls. This credit can then be exchanged for call minutes which vary from country to country.
Viber for Business
Viber for Business is an advertising solution for businesses who want to connect with their target audience through instant messaging. Some of the more notable organizations to use this service include Coca-Cola and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
Viber for Business caters to the complete user journey of each customer:
Attract – marketing teams can reach a wide audience with in-app ads, stickers, offers, and targeted messages.
Interact – enabling customer segmentation to customize marketing messages.
Transact – here, Viber makes the process of making an in-app purchase effortless.
Stay in contact – to build a long-term relationship, merchants can then follow up with further ads, messages, and promotions to reward loyalty.
Prices for this service are charged monthly and specific to the business and geographic region.
Viber stickers and games
Viber stickers are a colorful way for users to express themselves in a chat.
Users can create their own stickers for free or pay for stickers in the Sticker Market. Most paid sticker packs are available for around $2.
Single and multi-player games are also offered on the platform. Again, some are free while others are available for a fee.
Key takeaways:
Viber is an instant messaging and VoIP platform founded by Talmon Marco and Igor Magazinnik. The idea for the platform came at a time when Marco was in a long-distance relationship and paying for expensive international phone calls.
Viber Out is a monthly subscription plan allowing users to call non-Viber users in 60 countries across the world. The company also sells pay-as-you-go credit to users which are exchanged for call minutes.
Viber for Business is a complete instant messaging marketing solution for businesses. Prices are available upon request.
Telegram is a messaging app emphasizing privacy and encryption, launched in 2013. It doesn’t make money yet, while it raised over $1.7 billion in Initial Coin Offerings throughout 2018, halted by the SEC in 2019. Telegram wants to keep the app 100% free while trying to sustain its growth.
Founded in 2009 by Brian Acton, Jan Koum WhatsApp is a messaging app acquired by Facebook in 2014 for $19B. In 2018 WhatsApp rolled out customers’ interaction services. WhatsApp might be transitioning toward a set of features from video chats to social commerce that might transform WhatsApp into a Super App.
Signal is a non-profit organization founded by Moxie Marlinspike and former WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton. The organization runs a messaging app that is safe, secure, and private.
Signal revenue generation is dependent on donations and grants. To become a larger player among messaging apps, Signal has also relied on a zero-interest loan from Acton with a long repayment period.
Many Signal donors are undisclosed. However, some of the known donors include Open Technology Fund, Freedom of the Press Foundation, and Elon Musk.
Mark Zuckerberg is the principal shareholder of the company. Not only he retains ownership and control of the company. Facebook, like Google, has issued two kinds of common stocks, Class A and Class B. Where the holders of Class B common stocks are entitled to ten votes per share, and holders of our Class A common stocks are entitled to one vote per share. Mark Zuckerberg has a total voting power of 57.9%.
In an asymmetric businessmodel, the organization doesn’t monetize the user directly. Still, it leverages the data users provide and technology, thus having a key customer pay to sustain the core asset. For example, Google makes money by leveraging users’ data and its algorithms sold to advertisers for visibility. This is how attention merchants make monetize their business models.
In an asymmetric businessmodel, the organization doesn’t monetize the user directly. Still, it leverages the data users provide and technology, thus having a key customer pay to sustain the core asset. For example, Google makes money by leveraging users’ data and its algorithms sold to advertisers for visibility.
Facebook, the main product of Meta, is an attention merchant. As such, its algorithms condense the attention of over 2.91 billion monthly active users as of June 2021. Meta generated $117.9 billion in revenues, in 2021, of which $114.9 billion was from advertising (97.4% of the total revenues) and over $2.2 billion from Reality Labs (the augmented and virtual reality products arm).
The ARPU, or average revenue per user, is a key metric to track the success of Facebook – now Meta – family of products. For instance, by the end of 2021, Meta’s ARPU worldwide was $11.57. While in US & Canada, it was $60.57, in Europe, it was $19.68, in Asia $4.89, and in the rest of the world, it was $3.43.
Facebook is characterized by a multi-faceted matrix organizational structure. The company utilizes a flat organizational structure in combination with corporate function-based teams and product-based or geographic divisions. The flat organizational structure is organized around the leadership of Mark Zuckerberg and the key executives around him. On the other hand, the function-based teams are based on the main corporate functions (like HR, productmanagement, investor relations, and so on).
A hidden revenuebusiness model is a pattern for revenue generation that keeps users out of the equation, so they don’t pay for the service or product offered. For instance, Google’s users don’t pay for the search engine. Instead, the revenue streams come from advertising money spent by businesses bidding on keywords.
TikTok is a Chinese creative social media platform driven by short-form video content enabling users to interact and generate content at scale. TikTok primarily makes money through advertising, and it generated $4.6 billion in advertising revenues in 2021, thus making it among the most popular attention-based business models or attention merchants.
Instagram makes money via visual advertising. As part of Facebook products, the company generates revenues for Facebook Inc.’s overall businessmodel. Acquired by Facebook for a billion dollars in 2012, today Instagram is integrated into the overall Facebook business strategy. In 2018, Instagram founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger left the company, as Facebook pushed toward tighter integration of the two platforms.
YouTube was acquired for almost $1.7 billion in 2006 by Google. It makes money through advertising and subscription revenues. YouTube advertising network is part of Google Ads, and it generated more than $28B in revenue by 2021. YouTube also makes money with its paid memberships and premium content.
Twitter makes money in two ways: advertising and data licensing. In 2021, Twitter generated $4.5 billion from advertising and $570 million from data licensing. While Twitter generated $5 billion in total revenues, it lost 221 million.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
