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Can you use Telegram to talk to friends on Whatsapp or Messenger?

by phailhaus 10y ago

leesalminen 10y ago
Wouldn't that defeat the point?
- phailhaus 10y ago
  Then the advice to "just use Telegram" is useless. It cannot replace the chat services we rail against because it's literally asking people to ditch their friends.
  - reitanqild 10y ago
    No, we are asking friends to try a better messenger. Either I am a very good salesman or it isn't really hard. I have participated in getting hundreds of people to ditch Whatsapp for Telegram (family + a few local groups I am member of). I just started by using it to communicated woth my wife, then with close friends, then recommending it as enthusiastically as I used to recommend Whatsapp. When "everyone" find they are using Telegram foreverything but a few groups then they will start bugging the rest of the members and suddenly even big groups switch.
reitanqild 10y ago
Not Whatsapp, not officially at least. They will go after anyone who reverse engineers and publicizes an API. I think at some point they had the (IMO possibly good) idea that they would make the client free of charge and make money by charging for API access for businesses etc but that was before (IMO as usual) they decided to go all in on scooping up user data and trying to copy Snapchat again ;-)
dromen 10y ago
Can you use Whatsapp to talk to friends on Telegram or Messenger? We're in a period of closed chat ecosystems (Joe Schmoe doesn't use Matrix, IRC or XMPP) and fairly spacious smartphone storage, which in my circles means that people tend to be quite willing to install an extra app for chatting. A bunch of my friends use Signal, and the ones that don't I communicate with on WhatsApp.
- phailhaus 10y ago
  I've found the exact opposite, there's no way I'm going to get all my friends and family to install Telegram and set up an account just for me. That's why it's pretty unreasonable to casually propose Telegram as a replacement for solutions like Whatsapp. Unless it lets me talk to users on other platforms (how would it even do that?), Messenger and Whatsapp are here to stay.
  - reitanqild 10y ago
    Just start by installing it. Chances are you'll see a number of your friends have it installed already as others have noted in this thread. Then talk about it to your friends, show them the stuff you know they will love. For some it is bots. For others it is themes. Hashtags to follow topics. The possibility to have a chat with yourself (I run a journal like thingy where I note when I check oil on my car, when I changed my contacts etc, all hashtagged so I can retrieve it by tag later.)

Can you use Telegram to talk to friends on Whatsapp or Messenger?

leesalminen 10y ago

Wouldn't that defeat the point?

phailhaus 10y ago
Then the advice to "just use Telegram" is useless. It cannot replace the chat services we rail against because it's literally asking people to ditch their friends.
- reitanqild 10y ago
  No, we are asking friends to try a better messenger. Either I am a very good salesman or it isn't really hard. I have participated in getting hundreds of people to ditch Whatsapp for Telegram (family + a few local groups I am member of). I just started by using it to communicated woth my wife, then with close friends, then recommending it as enthusiastically as I used to recommend Whatsapp. When "everyone" find they are using Telegram foreverything but a few groups then they will start bugging the rest of the members and suddenly even big groups switch.

reitanqild 10y ago

Not Whatsapp, not officially at least. They will go after anyone who reverse engineers and publicizes an API. I think at some point they had the (IMO possibly good) idea that they would make the client free of charge and make money by charging for API access for businesses etc but that was before (IMO as usual) they decided to go all in on scooping up user data and trying to copy Snapchat again ;-)

dromen 10y ago

Can you use Whatsapp to talk to friends on Telegram or Messenger? We're in a period of closed chat ecosystems (Joe Schmoe doesn't use Matrix, IRC or XMPP) and fairly spacious smartphone storage, which in my circles means that people tend to be quite willing to install an extra app for chatting. A bunch of my friends use Signal, and the ones that don't I communicate with on WhatsApp.

phailhaus 10y ago
I've found the exact opposite, there's no way I'm going to get all my friends and family to install Telegram and set up an account just for me. That's why it's pretty unreasonable to casually propose Telegram as a replacement for solutions like Whatsapp. Unless it lets me talk to users on other platforms (how would it even do that?), Messenger and Whatsapp are here to stay.
- reitanqild 10y ago
  Just start by installing it. Chances are you'll see a number of your friends have it installed already as others have noted in this thread. Then talk about it to your friends, show them the stuff you know they will love. For some it is bots. For others it is themes. Hashtags to follow topics. The possibility to have a chat with yourself (I run a journal like thingy where I note when I check oil on my car, when I changed my contacts etc, all hashtagged so I can retrieve it by tag later.)