Living apart but communicating all the time led to very expensive phone bills. Co-founder Talmon Marco's girlfriend at the time was based in Hong Kong while he was living out in New York City. Viber was founded in 2010 to solve the problem of long-distance relationships. Viber's offices are located in London, Manila, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Singapore, and Tokyo. Since 2017, its corporate name has been Rakuten Viber. The software was developed in 2010 by Cyprus-based Viber Media, which was bought by Rakuten in 2014.

As of 2018, there are over a billion registered users on the network. In addition to instant messaging it allows users to exchange media such as images and video records, and also provides a paid international landline and mobile calling service called Viber Out. Users are registered and identified through a cellular telephone number, although the service is accessible on desktop platforms without needing mobile connectivity. Viber, or Rakuten Viber, is a cross-platform voice over IP (VoIP) and instant messaging (IM) software application owned by Japanese multinational company Rakuten, provided as freeware for the Google Android, iOS, Microsoft Windows, Apple macOS and Linux platforms. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly neutral point of view. A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject.

Viber video call app