6 ms·

Telegram now has a recommendation system

33 points by MitPitt 3y ago

pikseladam 3y ago
alt messages on images is funny :)
ulrischa 3y ago
In some days whatsapp will do the same thing I guess
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  That would surprise me. WhatsApp lags behind, in many ways now. (but I actually have Telegram only on the desktop as it is too distracting on the mobile)
  - nvoeiah 3y ago
    Thankfully, because Telegram seems unable to stop adding bloatware. Their service was complete years ago.
    - skyyler 3y ago
      This is my issue as well. Telegram in 2019 was perfect. None of the features added since then have been that great.
      - GaggiX 3y ago
        In 2019, the official Telegram client didn't have chat folders so I was using a Telegram client made by an Iranian dude (Telegram was extremely popular in Iran and Iranian clients were the most feature-rich).
    - barbazoo 3y ago
      Switch over to Signal, the bloat velocity is much much lower :)
      - nvoeiah 3y ago
        Yes, and I will talk to myself. Not to mention the app is a buggy mess. At least on iphone.
        FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        >Not to mention the app is a buggy mess. At least on iphone. If you think it's buggy on iPhone you have no idea what's going on on Android. The iOS venison is actaully the "polished " one as Signal devs daily drive iPhones.
        barbazoo 3y ago
        I have used it on Android for years and on iOS since 2 months or so ago and I haven't encountered any bugs as far as I can tell. What am I missing?
        FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        Have someone call you on Signal. Missed calls galore. Also texts. It just dozez all the time (despite having been configured in Android to not let it sleep) and texts come late and calls get missed.
        crtasm 3y ago
        It doesn't "doze all the time" here, seems like you're blaming Signal when it's your phone's power management software not working as described. The only people I know that have this kind of issue with Signal are all on Huawei phones, we've configured them and it's worked for a while but Huawei only seem to care about letting Facebook/Whatsapp/Teitter/etc.. run properly.
        hutzlibu 3y ago
        I have this problem on different Samsung phones. And I only ever had it with Signal, no other messenger.
brink 3y ago
I hope telegram knows the main reason that I and many other people use Telegram is because it doesn't have social media features like a feed. Now that they've finished creating the "perfect" messenger, every update looks more and more concerning as my favorite messaging app begins to look more and more like facebook.
- itake 3y ago
  +1. I like the anti-discoverability in Telegram, but I can see why they would need such a feature to grow their business.
- jwells89 3y ago
  In general, app feature creep is becoming increasingly tiresome. It’s sometimes ok for software to be “done”, with any further engineering instead going towards making the product ever-more rock solid. Nobody seems to realize this though.
  - wayfinder 3y ago
    It's because these smaller products don't make money and will eventually die unless they figure something out. I don't buy anything from Telegram. I don't see any ads. Yet I use its API and chat for a price of $0. Something has to give.
  - ratg13 3y ago
    WinZip is always the first thing I think of in this context.
- hombre_fatal 3y ago
  Meh, like it or not (I can guess which), Telegram has the best API in the game and it's amazing for businesses and all sorts of use-cases beyond chatting 1:1 with your friends. For example, its API lets you create buttons and nested applications within the app which certainly aren't there for you to talk with Billy from work. So it makes sense that they build out more features for those use-cases like those using it as a media platform. I really like what they're doing. This is how you build a platform. I'd be surprised if HNers are even aware of how other people use Telegram beyond basic chat. We tend to dismiss and hold disdain for use-cases we don't care about rather than learn about them earnestly.
risyachka 3y ago
Feature and UX-wise telegram is the goat. The only unfortunate thing is that one of its biggest investors is russian's government wealth fund. Which makes you wonder why would they invest in it.
- klabb3 3y ago
  > […] UX-wise telegram is the goat Insanely so. Only Apple comes close from a “pleasurable” and physically snappy pov. A bit of an apples-oranges comparison, but still. Discord as well I guess but it’s nothing like telegram. Telegram has this strong old-school “app-feel” in a world where everything else feels like an eventual consistency web app with 2 spinners going off at once for simple interactions (thin client with cloud-based source of truth). The details put in to even tiny things like transitions are well thought through, and they almost never feel intrusive or distracting. State is always fresh and no reloading is necessary. Not saying I love everything about telegram, but their UX truly stands out, surprisingly even against big and well funded players like messenger.
  - jwells89 3y ago
    I think the main differentiator is that Telegram prioritizes responsiveness and feeling of “solidness” (no blinking frames when loading and the like) in a world where those things are usually written off as unavoidable casualties. It’s similar to the difference between physical products that feel well-considered and well built vs. creaky hollow glossy black plastic Walmart fare.
  - blharr 3y ago
    Discord calls are great, but the chat UX is awful in my experience. I'm curious, what do you like about it?
    - klabb3 3y ago
      Yeah I guess the bar is pretty low these days. The UX is very confusing indeed but it is nice looking, snappy and has reduced visual clutter compared to similar apps, imo.
ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
Telegram is what software should be. Silicon Valley companies should learn a lot of things from them. How to build great features with great UX, branding and most important blazing fast performance. Our apps are so clunky in comparison.
- mathverse 3y ago
  I disagree. Telegram is wonky and filled with bugs and weird UX decisions. It's a prime example of a platform that is just "good enough" but has no polish and added value.
  - yesco 3y ago
    How surprising, I love using Telegram specifically because it feels so stable & polished across multiple platforms (including Linux). In fact , the UI/UX is so straightforward I was even able to successfully transition my friends and family to it and finally escape the tyranny of iMessage. What do you recommend as an alternative?
  - pelagicAustral 3y ago
    I've been using it since Meta acquired WhatsApp. Always on a shitty £300-tops Android phone and I have never experienced any bugs, or lag, or wonkyness... The UX is simply perfect. Especially compared to WhatsApp, which I now have to use because "the rest of the office uses it"...
    - the_third_wave 3y ago
      > Always on a shitty £300-tops Android phone What is 'shitty' about a '£300-tops Android phone'? I never paid more than ~€200 for a new phone, my current 'daily' phone is a Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 pro from 2018 (running a de-fanged Google-free Android distribution) which still runs 2-3 days on a single charge and runs all apps I care to use. I don't consider this a 'shitty' phone in any way.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
yellow_lead 3y ago
I don't use the "social media" features either. I just use it for messaging. I'm fine with it if the social media features stay out of my way, but based on experience this will not be the case.
andersrs 3y ago
I wish they'd fix that bug where Telegram Mac tries to apply app updates and gets stuck and you miss messages. But no clearly it's more important to force feed nasty social crap into people's eyeballs.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
weberer 3y ago
>To make discovering channels easier, when you join a channel, you'll now see a list of similar public channels. There's no channel browser, but there's a similarity recommendation system? It seems a bit backwards. Right now channels are impossible to find without going through a third party site.
jFriedensreich 3y ago
The main reason i started using telegram was that it seems to be the only messenger that allows moving devices between android and ios as needed. Whatsapp and signal, basically lock you into one platform without any option to export or move accounts, which is really bewildering to me. (and no the whatsapp export feature is a scam to counter EU law but it does not work and the migrate to ios feature only works when whiping the ios device) But i have to say i am really amazed how great the app feels and works. Even stupid features like stickers that i never thought about before are so good i use them.
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  Signal will let you export but not choose where to export to, so if you're running out of space on your phone and add an SD card to back up your signal database or export media, tough luck because the output destination is hardcoded. For your security, of course.
  - crtasm 3y ago
    If you first turn off backups, you should then be able to turn it back on and choose your SD card. My backups have always gone to my SD card.
  - jFriedensreich 3y ago
    "Signal Export" is account metadata without messages and images! And the backup is encrypted, you need some third party tool to decrypt it and that does not work for me and i would not consider a company satisfying data portability laws if the export depends on compiling c++ from a third party. And if you just want to move your signal account from android to ios that wont help you either as its not possible to restore and android backup to an ios signal app.
slim 3y ago
killer feature ▼
sertbdfgbnfgsd 3y ago
Is anyone else impressed with how many features Telegram has while at the same time being so smooth? My experience is that invariably the more feature the more sluggish an app. I can only conclude that Telegram must have excellent developers, or otherwise a process that has figured something out.
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
Like heroin, one taste of that sweet corrupting recommendation/ad revenue and they won't be able to stop.

33 points by MitPitt 3y ago

pikseladam 3y ago

alt messages on images is funny :)

ulrischa 3y ago

In some days whatsapp will do the same thing I guess

hutzlibu 3y ago
That would surprise me. WhatsApp lags behind, in many ways now. (but I actually have Telegram only on the desktop as it is too distracting on the mobile)
- nvoeiah 3y ago
  Thankfully, because Telegram seems unable to stop adding bloatware. Their service was complete years ago.
  - skyyler 3y ago
    This is my issue as well. Telegram in 2019 was perfect. None of the features added since then have been that great.
    - GaggiX 3y ago
      In 2019, the official Telegram client didn't have chat folders so I was using a Telegram client made by an Iranian dude (Telegram was extremely popular in Iran and Iranian clients were the most feature-rich).
  - barbazoo 3y ago
    Switch over to Signal, the bloat velocity is much much lower :)
    - nvoeiah 3y ago
      Yes, and I will talk to myself. Not to mention the app is a buggy mess. At least on iphone.
      - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        >Not to mention the app is a buggy mess. At least on iphone. If you think it's buggy on iPhone you have no idea what's going on on Android. The iOS venison is actaully the "polished " one as Signal devs daily drive iPhones.
        barbazoo 3y ago
        I have used it on Android for years and on iOS since 2 months or so ago and I haven't encountered any bugs as far as I can tell. What am I missing?
        FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        Have someone call you on Signal. Missed calls galore. Also texts. It just dozez all the time (despite having been configured in Android to not let it sleep) and texts come late and calls get missed.
        crtasm 3y ago
        It doesn't "doze all the time" here, seems like you're blaming Signal when it's your phone's power management software not working as described. The only people I know that have this kind of issue with Signal are all on Huawei phones, we've configured them and it's worked for a while but Huawei only seem to care about letting Facebook/Whatsapp/Teitter/etc.. run properly.
        hutzlibu 3y ago
        I have this problem on different Samsung phones. And I only ever had it with Signal, no other messenger.

brink 3y ago

I hope telegram knows the main reason that I and many other people use Telegram is because it doesn't have social media features like a feed. Now that they've finished creating the "perfect" messenger, every update looks more and more concerning as my favorite messaging app begins to look more and more like facebook.

itake 3y ago
+1. I like the anti-discoverability in Telegram, but I can see why they would need such a feature to grow their business.
jwells89 3y ago
In general, app feature creep is becoming increasingly tiresome. It’s sometimes ok for software to be “done”, with any further engineering instead going towards making the product ever-more rock solid. Nobody seems to realize this though.
- wayfinder 3y ago
  It's because these smaller products don't make money and will eventually die unless they figure something out. I don't buy anything from Telegram. I don't see any ads. Yet I use its API and chat for a price of $0. Something has to give.
- ratg13 3y ago
  WinZip is always the first thing I think of in this context.
hombre_fatal 3y ago
Meh, like it or not (I can guess which), Telegram has the best API in the game and it's amazing for businesses and all sorts of use-cases beyond chatting 1:1 with your friends. For example, its API lets you create buttons and nested applications within the app which certainly aren't there for you to talk with Billy from work. So it makes sense that they build out more features for those use-cases like those using it as a media platform. I really like what they're doing. This is how you build a platform. I'd be surprised if HNers are even aware of how other people use Telegram beyond basic chat. We tend to dismiss and hold disdain for use-cases we don't care about rather than learn about them earnestly.

risyachka 3y ago

Feature and UX-wise telegram is the goat. The only unfortunate thing is that one of its biggest investors is russian's government wealth fund. Which makes you wonder why would they invest in it.

klabb3 3y ago
> […] UX-wise telegram is the goat Insanely so. Only Apple comes close from a “pleasurable” and physically snappy pov. A bit of an apples-oranges comparison, but still. Discord as well I guess but it’s nothing like telegram. Telegram has this strong old-school “app-feel” in a world where everything else feels like an eventual consistency web app with 2 spinners going off at once for simple interactions (thin client with cloud-based source of truth). The details put in to even tiny things like transitions are well thought through, and they almost never feel intrusive or distracting. State is always fresh and no reloading is necessary. Not saying I love everything about telegram, but their UX truly stands out, surprisingly even against big and well funded players like messenger.
- jwells89 3y ago
  I think the main differentiator is that Telegram prioritizes responsiveness and feeling of “solidness” (no blinking frames when loading and the like) in a world where those things are usually written off as unavoidable casualties. It’s similar to the difference between physical products that feel well-considered and well built vs. creaky hollow glossy black plastic Walmart fare.
- blharr 3y ago
  Discord calls are great, but the chat UX is awful in my experience. I'm curious, what do you like about it?
  - klabb3 3y ago
    Yeah I guess the bar is pretty low these days. The UX is very confusing indeed but it is nice looking, snappy and has reduced visual clutter compared to similar apps, imo.

ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago

Telegram is what software should be. Silicon Valley companies should learn a lot of things from them. How to build great features with great UX, branding and most important blazing fast performance. Our apps are so clunky in comparison.

mathverse 3y ago
I disagree. Telegram is wonky and filled with bugs and weird UX decisions. It's a prime example of a platform that is just "good enough" but has no polish and added value.
- yesco 3y ago
  How surprising, I love using Telegram specifically because it feels so stable & polished across multiple platforms (including Linux). In fact , the UI/UX is so straightforward I was even able to successfully transition my friends and family to it and finally escape the tyranny of iMessage. What do you recommend as an alternative?
- pelagicAustral 3y ago
  I've been using it since Meta acquired WhatsApp. Always on a shitty £300-tops Android phone and I have never experienced any bugs, or lag, or wonkyness... The UX is simply perfect. Especially compared to WhatsApp, which I now have to use because "the rest of the office uses it"...
  - the_third_wave 3y ago
    > Always on a shitty £300-tops Android phone What is 'shitty' about a '£300-tops Android phone'? I never paid more than ~€200 for a new phone, my current 'daily' phone is a Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 pro from 2018 (running a de-fanged Google-free Android distribution) which still runs 2-3 days on a single charge and runs all apps I care to use. I don't consider this a 'shitty' phone in any way.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

yellow_lead 3y ago

I don't use the "social media" features either. I just use it for messaging. I'm fine with it if the social media features stay out of my way, but based on experience this will not be the case.

andersrs 3y ago

I wish they'd fix that bug where Telegram Mac tries to apply app updates and gets stuck and you miss messages. But no clearly it's more important to force feed nasty social crap into people's eyeballs.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

weberer 3y ago

>To make discovering channels easier, when you join a channel, you'll now see a list of similar public channels. There's no channel browser, but there's a similarity recommendation system? It seems a bit backwards. Right now channels are impossible to find without going through a third party site.

jFriedensreich 3y ago

The main reason i started using telegram was that it seems to be the only messenger that allows moving devices between android and ios as needed. Whatsapp and signal, basically lock you into one platform without any option to export or move accounts, which is really bewildering to me. (and no the whatsapp export feature is a scam to counter EU law but it does not work and the migrate to ios feature only works when whiping the ios device) But i have to say i am really amazed how great the app feels and works. Even stupid features like stickers that i never thought about before are so good i use them.

anigbrowl 3y ago
Signal will let you export but not choose where to export to, so if you're running out of space on your phone and add an SD card to back up your signal database or export media, tough luck because the output destination is hardcoded. For your security, of course.
- crtasm 3y ago
  If you first turn off backups, you should then be able to turn it back on and choose your SD card. My backups have always gone to my SD card.
- jFriedensreich 3y ago
  "Signal Export" is account metadata without messages and images! And the backup is encrypted, you need some third party tool to decrypt it and that does not work for me and i would not consider a company satisfying data portability laws if the export depends on compiling c++ from a third party. And if you just want to move your signal account from android to ios that wont help you either as its not possible to restore and android backup to an ios signal app.

slim 3y ago

killer feature ▼

sertbdfgbnfgsd 3y ago

Is anyone else impressed with how many features Telegram has while at the same time being so smooth? My experience is that invariably the more feature the more sluggish an app. I can only conclude that Telegram must have excellent developers, or otherwise a process that has figured something out.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

Like heroin, one taste of that sweet corrupting recommendation/ad revenue and they won't be able to stop.