EXCLUSIVE FOR TELEGRAF: Viber Director discovered why Serbia is essential to this company (PHOTO)

These days Belgrade has visited Viber Director for Central and Eastern Europe, Anatas Raykov. Telegraf portal had a chance to speak with him while he was visiting Comtrade company, and he told us what the future plans for this popular social application is.

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Every man who has smartphone has a Viber installed on their phones. Some people can't even imagine life without this application. So we decided to see what Viber is preparing for all of us, and we have found out something that are in progress and people who loves Serbian football will be thrill about it.

Telegraf spoke with Mr. Raykov and we asked him a few question about Viber and their plans for our region.

A lot of people around the world are debating how is correctly pronouncing Viber. He solves the big mystery for us.

- The correct pronounce is /'vaɪ bɚ/, with a V. long and short E.

Foto: Marko Todorović

Can you tell us what the basic idea of Viber was when it was born?

- Basically, Viber's idea was to really democratize communications. We created the best possible application on mobile for people so they can communicate freely. Viber started as free calls because that was the highest point. Shortly after that we expand it to freer messages that became a part of our DNA.

What can we expect from Viber in 2016?

- Basically, we are starting to move into a social field. We are starting to do a very local approach into social by boarding a lot of partners, celebrities, news channels, sports clubs...so they can really use are platform.

Printskrin: chats.viber.com/telegraf.rs

That is a way of advancing the public chats?

- Yes, this is the corner stone on which we are building. There will be a lot more to come, which will be on a top of public chats and we are expanding our offerings.

How did people react on public chats?

 - We already have a several groups on Viber which have more than 8 million followers, so they are starting to pick up in a very large scale. They have only been launched for 5 months and people are quite positive. We have a very, very high profile of people on public chats like prime minister of India, DJ Paul Van Dyk, prominent bloggers, Mashable...

Foto: Marko Todorović

Are people safe when they speak or chat thru Viber?

- One of the reasons why Viber also became a very popular is the fact that we are using the highest level of encryption services for all our calls and messages. The other thing that is very important for our users is the fact that we don't store any of the messages or pictures, or anything on our servers. Actually, every message that is sent thru Viber it goes to other site, it doesn't remain on our service. For example, when you change your phone, you actually might lose all your messages if you don’t have a back-up because they are only on your device. Some of them don't go thru our servers, or if they go, they stay there not more than 2 seconds.

In last couple of years, people are getting messages with number that they should call if they want to get 1.000 dollars. How does Viber fighting with that?

- This is our major concern. We have an automatic system, but because Viber is such a big platform that's why we are attacked the most along with our other major competitors. And what we have the system where we catch in real time, like the moments someone have a suspicious behavior, we ban this number from our system. We are constantly improving on that and I would say that we expect to minimize this exposure for our users in very short future.

Foto: Flickr/Sam Azgor

How much people are using Viber in our region and in Serbia?

- In our region we have a very large presents, more than 27 million users in countries that I'm responsible for. Serbia is among the top markets in the region and one of the fastest growing as well for Viber.

What are the differences between WhatsApp and Viber? What are your advantages?

- First of all we have a very large options for expressions when we talk about messages, for example stickers. We are putting a quite lot of efforts into stickers and I want to give you a hint for all football fans in Serbia that we might have a very interested products in this direction. We have two very prominent partners that will be joining us in the very near future. This will be, obviously, an advantage for us and the other thing which is very important for Viber is that we are crossing a platform. We have application for PC, Mac, and Linux, for any kind of popular advice so people can exchange information very effectively and easily.

Foto: Marko Todorović

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Are you preparing something new in next couple of months?

- There will be huge news to come, but right now I cannot share, you will see.

Do you use WhatsApp?

- Yes, I always watch the competition.

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(N. Ivanovski)