Viber

PSA: Your chat and call apps may leak your IP address

Your favorite messaging and calling app could reveal your IP address to the person on the other end of a call. And that, essentially, is because most chat apps default to using peer-to-peer connection

Messaging app Viber launches Payments, a new digital wallet for paying bills, money transfers and buying goods

Viber, the messaging app owned by Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten, has long been dancing around the area of fintech, launching services like money transfer and chatbot payments in various countries

Voicy wants to pwn gamers with audio memes

Rakuten acquires Innoeye for its push into 5G and communications services

Rakuten, often referred to as the “Amazon of Japan” with extensive holdings in e-commerce and streaming media, has made an acquisition that will help it build up and flex a newer arm of it

Leverice is a team messenger app that’s taking aim at information overload

Meet Leverice: A team messenger and collaboration platform that’s aiming to compete with b2b giants like Slack by tackling an issue that continues to plague real-time messaging — namely, &

Meet Dongtu, the Giphy of China

With its own universe of homegrown social networks, e-commerce platforms and search engines, the Chinese internet is a world apart from its counterpart in the U.S. But in some areas, the two countrie

India says law permits agencies to snoop on citizen’s devices

The Indian government said on Tuesday that it is “empowered” to intercept, monitor, or decrypt any digital communication “generated, transmitted, received, or stored” on a citizen’s devi

Grocery delivery startup Honestbee is running out of money and trying to sell

Honestbee, the online grocery delivery service in Asia, is nearly out of money and trying to offload its business. The company has held early conversations with a number of suitors in Asia, including

CleverTap lands $26M for its mobile-focused customer marketing service

CleverTap, an India-based startup that lets companies track and improve engagement with users across the web, has pulled in $26 million in new funding thanks to a round led by Sequoia India. Existing

Viber users can now get local numbers in the US, UK and Canada for inbound voice and SMS

Viber, the messaging app owned by Rakuten that a year ago said it had 1 billion registered users, has added another feature in its longer-term efforts to add more stickiness to its service, while also

Rakuten’s Viber chat app plans to charge to operate chatbots in controversial move

Viber, the messaging app owned by Japanese e-commerce firm Rakuten, is poised to implement a controversial new strategy that will see it charge companies that run chatbots on its platform. The convent

Viber is launching Viber Communities, group chats for up to 1B users

Messaging apps have seen a surge of popularity in recent years as people seek ways to communicate more directly than on social networks. But they also have been adding large group chat options into th

Rakuten will roll its $9B loyalty program into a new blockchain-based cryptocurrency, Rakuten Coin

Messaging apps have seen a surge of popularity in recent years as people seek ways to communicate more directly than on social networks. But they also have been adding large group chat options into th

Techstars is launching its first accelerator program in Asia in partnership with Rakuten

Techstars is bringing its global accelerator program to Asia for the first time in partnership with Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten and its chat app Viber. The companies will run a three-month progr

The most monocle-dropping tech acquisitions of the past five years

This is a list of tech deals from the past half decade that were surprising because of their size, impact or seeming randomness. Some have paid off, while others (cough*Microsoft-Nokia*cough) remain 

Viber acquires Chatter Commerce, the startup behind its shopping keyboard

Messaging app Viber earlier this year made its first foray into shopping services with Instant Shopping, a feature that lets you search for items for sale via a keyboard when you have the messaging a

Viber is the latest messaging app to clone Snapchat with new ‘Secret Chat’ feature

Everyone is cloning Snapchat right now, but messaging app Viber has gone back to the old school by copying Snapchat's core ephemeral messaging feature.

Messaging app Viber adds e-commerce button to sell you items inspired by your chats

Messaging app Viber is today announcing a new feature that taps into the bigger trend of messaging apps becoming multi-functional platforms, and also its ownership by e-commerce company Rakuten. Viber

Viber now lets users set photos and videos to disappear after they’re viewed

Messaging apps can amass a lot of user data over time including everything from personal photos and videos users have shared to records of who they talk to most, where they’ve been, and what onlin

Messaging app Viber names mobile ad vet Djamel Agaoua as new CEO

While messaging app watchers are waiting for Snap Inc. to announce its IPO, another app has appointed a new CEO. Viber — the messaging app that was acquired by Rakuten in 2014 — has anno
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