2 ms·

Why would I want to use telegram in the first place?

• lucb1e 10y ago
  1. It's not Facebook's 2. The clients are open source (for me that's a moral reason) 3. Secret chats are verifiably encrypted 4. You can make your own client if you want, causing: 4.1. Someone used a custom client (tgcli) to create a backup feature, which I extended to make html exports like MSN had (quite a future-proof and readable format). This prevents lock-in. 4.2. You are much less restricted in your choice of operating system, given you or someone else takes the effort of porting or writing a client. 5. The existing desktop client is native and doesn't require your phone to be turned on and have data active. 6. The clients have lots of features like custom themes, sending large files, setting up a username which can be linked to publicly, creating broadcast channels, pinned chats, etc. I'm not sure how much of this whatsapp implemented by now. It's true that Telegram also copied other products a lot, but they added lots of features that competitors didn't have, but nowadays they do (it made the market more innovative again). I'm also not saying everyone should move to Telegram. Some monopolies are better than others (some are owned by Facebook & other things I just mentioned) but all monopolies are bad. Additionally Whatsapp has some advantages like calling and knowing what the profit model is. The latter is actually my greatest worry about Telegram, but everything considered, Telegram is the best thing currently available in my opinion.
  • edem 10y ago
    Good point. Do you have strategies which you used to convince your friends to start using Telegram?