Viber launches public chats: Follow your favourite celebrities

Viber has released an update to its instant messaging service which allows users to follow 'public chats' from their favourite celebrities or brands.

Public chats are live conversations between influential people that Viber users can follow. Any Viber user can follow as many chats as they like, where participants in the chat can share text, photos, audio, videos and other multimedia.

Public chats are made up of two user groups, participants and followers. The main participant is the person who starts the chat, for example Pixie Lott. The main participant can then invite up to 99 other users to join the conversation.

Only participants can share chat and multimedia, which can then be followed and read by Viber's millions of users.

"The release of Public Chats on Viber allows people to interact in a new way, listening in on live discussions and staying up-to-date with exclusive content from the people and subjects that matter to them most," said Viber's CEO Talmon Marco.

"We are launching this concept with a great line-up of celebrities and personalities all over the world. They are opening up their conversations on Viber, and we're sure our users will love the 'fly-on-the-wall' experience this delivers."

For now only approved users can start public chats, but the tool will be opened up to all users in December.

The Viber update is rolling out now for iPhone, Android, Windows Phone and Blackberry.