Mobile VoIP provider Viber has announced a new feature for its Viber application for iOS, Android, and Blackberry devices: a free group text messaging service. The 2.2 release of the Viber application also supports sending group text messages with photos.

Viber may not (yet) be as popular as Skype or Rebtel, but in the roughly two years since its founding in 2010, the free text and call app has garnered 90 million users. According to stats from Viber, its users send 2 billion texts messages per month and use 1.5 billion minutes in calls. The new group text messaging feature is only accessible on the 2.2 version of the product, which is not available to Viber's Windows Phone users.

Despite its rapid growth and free VoIP services, Viber does have a limited scope: The over-the-top (OTT) VoIP service is a free text and call app, but only supports in-network calling and texting.

Source: gigaOM