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I was a little surprised to see a Telegram integration rather than Slack or Teams, given Anthropic's enterprise-first posture. But then I looked it up, and it t

by ainch 7mo ago

I was a little surprised to see a Telegram integration rather than Slack or Teams, given Anthropic's enterprise-first posture. But then I looked it up, and it turns out Telegram dwarfs both, at around 1bn MAUs, vs 50m and 300m respectively! I had no idea - reminds me of the time I found out Snapchat has 2x the userbase of Twitter.

jen729w 7mo ago
Also, not a single one of those 300m Teams users wants to spend another minute there. Whereas people find Telegram useful and not odious.
- pokegobots 7mo ago
  Back in the day, when I used to play pokemon go, there was a small local community and we would struggle to decide where to meet up for the daily raids because people would basically not respond (so as t not commit), or not know which gym each other meant exactly, nor give live updates when people moved around, etc. etc. Then I joined a group from a bigger city where I commuted for work. They had a telegram group chat with two "channels", one for talking, one for bot posts. The telegram bot could be sent a single screenshot of a raid, and it would use OCR to automatically generate an interactive UI for that raid for everyone to see, with all the relevant info, and it would also clear itself up when the raid is no longer relevant. You could press buttons to say you were going, that you MAYBE were going, if you were late, and if you already started/done it, all in single clicks. Tons of options, tons of information, all live updated. I was bedazzled. That feature singlehandedly removed all attrition from urban social gaming. And it was entirely grassroots. It made me try out making my own telegram bots, and yeah, you basically have the power to make a little app in chat form, even some that feel like CLI commands. It's been OVER HALF A DECADE and I have yet to see a single other chat application have that degree of freedom where it comes to applications and bots. Some like discord even did whole ass 100% reworks of their bot AP to support the likes of slash commands, and still fall short. And there's none worse than Teams. Teams hates you. Teams spent the prior 2 years before this one basically pointing a gun to our heads telling us they were removing webhooks and pushing back on it whenever they repeatedly get told that's the most insane and dogshit idea ever. And they still did it. There's just no spark in Teams UX. No self-respect. It's a soulless product made entirely as a dumping place of "synergy" with other M$ products. It's reciprocal, I hate it too. Oh and my local group never go into telegram because they didn't want a new app. It died, but I still kept playing after work without problem. It makes me wonder how fast Teams would die if it wasn't proped up by 365 and Azure subscriptions.
  - eru 7mo ago
    I wonder if Teams hates you, because they are doing the bidding of their actual customers (corporate decisions makers and purse holders), and those people's interests are not exactly aligned with the users'.
    - nine_k 7mo ago
      The problem is that these people holding the actual purse don't care enough about their subordinates' experience. They care about the price tag, and about compliance. Apparently the makers of Teams think about the same. None of them thinks in terms of lost productivity.
      - eru 7mo ago
        Yes, compliance is a big one. And it's not so much that they are actively hostile to user productivity (and quality of life), they just don't care enough.
  - nozzlegear 7mo ago
    > we would struggle to decide where to meet up for the daily raids because people would basically not respond (so as t not commit), or not know which gym each other meant exactly, nor give live updates when people moved around, etc. etc. This kind of thing is so common in groups of people, it's one of my pet peeves. My own family does this in our group messages when trying to make big decisions like who should host thanksgiving or where we should go for a family vacation. I make it a point to just take charge and tell people that we're doing XYZ now. It usually either results in a decision, or gets the discussion going enough that I can do it again with new information.
    - theK 7mo ago
      That has roughly been my MO as well and it works great for groups where identities have settled. But one has to keep in mind that, in our currwnt "more woke" times, if you go this way in a new group you run the risk of being labeled an array of things. So tread carefully there.
- do_anh_tu 7mo ago
  I’ve been using Telegram for about 10 years, and it’s one of the few products that has consistently felt great the entire time. It’s fast everywhere: backend, mobile app, desktop app, all of it. Everything just works. Its sync is out of this world—fluid, fast, and seamless across devices. You can use it on your phone, then move to your PC or laptop and continue instantly without friction. Unlimited message history and file storage are fantastic, and the bot platform is absurdly powerful. It’s boring in the best way, which is exactly what you want from a channel for interacting with your agents everywhere.
  - hallway_monitor 7mo ago
    Since we are apparently giving messaging platform reviews here, I feel exactly the same way about Microsoft Teams. It works great. It does everything I want. It doesn’t get in my way. 10 out of 10 keep up the great work guys!
    - ozozozd 7mo ago
      Username checks out?
    - dijit 7mo ago
      I don’t believe you. I would never accuse Teams of being fast. Doesn’t seem to matter if I have an i9, a macbook m4 or a threadripper.
      - badc0ffee 7mo ago
        I only use Teams for meetings and the calendar, and the occasional chat during a meeting. I find it totally fine and I don't really think about it much one way or the other. For reference I have a 2021 M1 Max with 64 GB.
        deleted 7mo ago
        [deleted]
        roywashere 7mo ago
- almostdeadguy 7mo ago
  Odious is one of the most reserved words you could use to describe Telegram, which is primarily a host for scams that the influencers and other bottom feeders aren't allowed to monetize on the big social networks.
- onair4you 7mo ago
  My employer keeps Slack so locked down it is not really possible to use anything useful with it anyway…
- snthpy 7mo ago
  I feel the opposite. I'm on Teams all day at work and have reluctantly opened Telegram recently to try a Claw despite having an account for years. I've been surprised how little support there has been for Teams in the whole AI ecosystem. It seems all developers assume that the whole world is at startups working on Slack when most businesses are on Microsoft 365.
  - xeyownt 7mo ago
    Looking forward to seeing AI ranting about pesky bullets in Word.
  - weird-eye-issue 7mo ago
    Compared to operating on text files (which is relatively very simple and something Claude Code is great for), I have a feeling it's kind of a disaster dealing with Microsoft integrations and the different file formats
  - theshrike79 7mo ago
    Just the fact how much Microsoft lies when you click the "keep me logged in" button should tell you why nobody bothers with Teams integration with anything.
  - dot_treo 7mo ago
    The main reason is just how hard it is to actually create anything that integrates with Teams. You have to jump through so meany hoops, wade through so many deprecated APIs, guess through so many half-way-wrong-by-now documentation pages. After building a proof of concept, we decided that we will only continue Teams integration if anyone is going to pay serious money for it.
revlolz 7mo ago
Telegram has a major issue with bots and bad actors though. They paywalled privacy features making it truly a terrible experience for users. 3-10 per day random messaging you.
- rowanG077 7mo ago
  Can't say I have had literally anyone ever message me on telegram. And I have been a daily user for years.
  - Gigachad 7mo ago
    If you join public groups with a lot of users you end up on a bunch of spam lists and get smashed by bots.
  - OJFord 7mo ago
    I get occasional spam - I'd guess it's because you've never joined a public group or shared your handle anywhere?
    - rowanG077 7mo ago
      I indeed never have joined a public group and never shared my handle with non-people I know.
  - sunaookami 7mo ago
    It's especially bad when you have a public username that is also kinda popular. They made "hide chat and mute for unknown contacts" free at least...
informal007 7mo ago
Maybe most of users of anthropic are individual developers over employee in tech company. I'm really happy that they choose telegram and discord.
- fragmede 7mo ago
  You're telling me that Anthropic, one of the hottest companies on the planet right now couldn't field four teams of developers to integrate with Discord, Slack, Telegram, and Teams? AI being such a productivity multiplier, seems like they could just choose to do it all. I mean, mythical man month and all that, but do it three times and have a retrospective and use Claude to refactor the pain points and centralize the learnings.
  - airstrike 7mo ago
    You'd be surprised....
  - Forgeties79 7mo ago
    Turns out the companies making promises don’t exemplify the results of their promises lol
  - whatever1 7mo ago
    Boris casually implements features and closes tickets the same day they are opened.
yen223 7mo ago
A lot of such cases. Claude itself had (has?) fewer users than Perplexity, let alone Meta AI, Gemini or ChatGPT
- Marciplan 7mo ago
  no they definitely did not have fewer users than Perplexity xD
  - yen223 7mo ago
    I like Claude, but polling done on Americans late last year shows otherwise: https://epoch.ai/data/polling https://epoch.ai/data/polling Overseas numbers are likely worse for Claude. Try and ask someone not in tech what they think of Claude or Anthropic. There's a high chance they've never heard of either. Things might have changed with Anthropic showing up at the Superbowl, and in the news over their fight with the Pentagon.
    - borski 7mo ago
      Late last year is not the timeline you want. Anthropic’s hockey stick happened earlier this year.
      - yen223 7mo ago
        Late last year was like 3 months ago. I'm bullish on Claude. It will see a surge in users, and will likely surpass Perplexity this year. However I don't think it will catch up to even Meta AI (which had 10x the number of users) this year.
        borski 7mo ago
        I’m aware of how long ago late 2025 was. Anthropic’s revenue in Q1 2026 has skyrocketed.
        7mo ago
miki123211 7mo ago
Telegram's bot API is literally one of the friendliest APIs (of any kind) I've ever seen. It's the first thing I reach for when server-to-mobile notifications are concerned. It's just as easy to set up as ntfy.sh, except that it doesn't break every other week on iOS.
- vrosas 7mo ago
  Interesting. I set up a bunch of slack webhooks for server events that's been working decently well but maybe I'll look at telegram.
  - theshrike79 7mo ago
    Slack (and Discord) webhooks are good for just shooting one-sided data into channels, but for interactive bots Telegram is so far ahead of anyone else it's crazy. Signal specifically is missing any kind of official bot support, cutting off massive audiences from even considering it as an option.
- ttul 7mo ago
  This is so true. I don’t like Telegram for a host of reasons, but the bot architecture is second to none. Try creating a bot in Slack. You’ll pull your hair out for hours. Same goes for Discord. Utter nightmare. Telegram? You send a DM and it is basically done.
  - baq 7mo ago
    Discord webhooks aren’t too bad… but the proper bot thing is ridiculous. They really lack a development mode server, having to know everything about oauth and token permissions before even starting is bonkers and why do I even need an app is beyond me. I’d probably have my bot completely implemented in telegram in the same time I figured out what an app is in discord and how to even add a new app to my server.
- lxgr 7mo ago
  Unfortunately, Telegram is also a no-go from a security/data privacy perspective for many use cases.
karlitooo 7mo ago
Surprisingly large number of businesses run on whatsapp, as a consultant in Asia it's prob around half the businesses I've worked with prefer it over teams/slack. If Meta had been sensible about API access Telegram wouldn't have even got a foothold.
- tmatsuzaki 7mo ago
  WhatsApp is actually more popular than Slack, isn’t it? In my country, almost everyone uses Slack, and I’ve hardly ever heard of any companies using WhatsApp, so that was surprising to me.
  - yen223 7mo ago
    WhatsApp is more popular than Slack, Teams and Telegram combined. WhatsApp has something like 2-3 billion users worldwide WhatsApp vs Slack + Teams is a bit of an apples to oranges comparison though.
    - tmatsuzaki 7mo ago
      Living in Japan has made me realize how different cultures can be — even down to the apps and services people use. It honestly surprises me, and now I kind of want to try WhatsApp too.
      - benhurmarcel 7mo ago
        Honestly Whatsapp is nothing special. It works well, just like many other chat apps nowadays. The interest is that in some large parts of the world, everyone uses it already.
    - kelvinjps10 7mo ago
      The only thing it's that creating bots for whatsapp it's not as easy as for telegram and it cost money. Actually that is the business plan for whatsapp making money from whatsapp business
arjie 7mo ago
Telegram has the best programmatic integration. Trivial to get working. You can be up and running in minutes. I use it to talk to a claw-style agent and it's truly unbelievable what you get for free.
zerkten 7mo ago
One issue is that 95% of the integrations will be fine with the default configuration. The others including some with high profit potential will have weird configs that will frustrate your customers the first time they try if not well tested/documented. It's better to take time and get it right. Enterprise customers love piloting and spending time, so best to approach that the right way too. Going with less complex options, that arguably have better APIs, makes it easier to develop your core product too and get real feedback from users.
kelvinjps10 7mo ago
I think it might because telegram integration it's just easy to do, I don't use telegram for actually messaging, I use it just to deploy my bots, it's a simple way to build simple tools, in a few lines you can get something working, you can have commands that work like buttons, accept images, respond with images and don't need anything else than your telegram account
beoberha 7mo ago
Spend 5 minutes looking up how to make a chat bot and be amazed how Telegram is really the only option. I was dumbfounded when rolling my own agent. iMessage is proprietary. WhatsApp charges you. Unofficial APIs exist, sure, but not my cup of tea. Then you have Discord or Slack, which are pretty heavyweight when all you want is a simple chat interface. Telegram makes it SO easy. Bots are first class resources on Telegram and they make them so easy to use.
- sroerick 7mo ago
  XMPP is working pretty well for me
moostee 7mo ago
Twitter is shockingly irrelevant given how much it gets mentioned.
- theshrike79 7mo ago
  Twitter put all normal fun bots out of business with their API changes, that's about it.
ACCount37 7mo ago
Telegram is more popular among "normal people", and it also has a laissez-faire attitude towards bots and bot development. Making a bot that you, or even other people, could add to their contact list and use is pretty easy. It's wild, but "people who want to build and run their own one-off bot for something like home automation" are almost treated by Telegram like first class citizens.
miroljub 7mo ago
It's not even funny how a multibillion-dollar company with thousands of employees having unlimited access to the "world's best coding models" lags behind a small one-man [1] open source project that already had multiple plugins for the same feature [2] for months. Pi already has 700+ third-party packages [2] for various purposes of various quality. But it doesn't matter, since creating a new working Pi extension to suit your needs is just a prompt away, and you don't even have to restart your coding session. [1] Pi Coding Agent https://pi.dev https://pi.dev [2] https://www.npmjs.com/package/@e9n/pi-channels https://www.npmjs.com/package/@e9n/pi-channels [3] https://pi.dev/packages https://pi.dev/packages
elAhmo 7mo ago
Apples and oranges comparison, one is a messaging app, the other two are used for communication and collaboration across teams in a workspace. I have worked in 5+ companies who used either Slack and Teams, none used Telegram for any comms. Telegram is 'bot friendly' since the beginning, gaining a lot of users with crypto boom a decade ago with coin drops and things like that, so it is very good to develop for, but I have your initial sentiment first - shame this hasn't launched with tools people actually use for work. And no, Discord is not used for that either.
paxys 7mo ago
Not really a meaningful comparison. Telegram is a personal messenger while Slack and Teams are for work. Telegram should be put alongside WhatsApp, iMessage, WeChat etc., which all have user bases in the billions.

by ainch 7mo ago

jen729w 7mo ago

Also, not a single one of those 300m Teams users wants to spend another minute there. Whereas people find Telegram useful and not odious.

pokegobots 7mo ago
Back in the day, when I used to play pokemon go, there was a small local community and we would struggle to decide where to meet up for the daily raids because people would basically not respond (so as t not commit), or not know which gym each other meant exactly, nor give live updates when people moved around, etc. etc. Then I joined a group from a bigger city where I commuted for work. They had a telegram group chat with two "channels", one for talking, one for bot posts. The telegram bot could be sent a single screenshot of a raid, and it would use OCR to automatically generate an interactive UI for that raid for everyone to see, with all the relevant info, and it would also clear itself up when the raid is no longer relevant. You could press buttons to say you were going, that you MAYBE were going, if you were late, and if you already started/done it, all in single clicks. Tons of options, tons of information, all live updated. I was bedazzled. That feature singlehandedly removed all attrition from urban social gaming. And it was entirely grassroots. It made me try out making my own telegram bots, and yeah, you basically have the power to make a little app in chat form, even some that feel like CLI commands. It's been OVER HALF A DECADE and I have yet to see a single other chat application have that degree of freedom where it comes to applications and bots. Some like discord even did whole ass 100% reworks of their bot AP to support the likes of slash commands, and still fall short. And there's none worse than Teams. Teams hates you. Teams spent the prior 2 years before this one basically pointing a gun to our heads telling us they were removing webhooks and pushing back on it whenever they repeatedly get told that's the most insane and dogshit idea ever. And they still did it. There's just no spark in Teams UX. No self-respect. It's a soulless product made entirely as a dumping place of "synergy" with other M$ products. It's reciprocal, I hate it too. Oh and my local group never go into telegram because they didn't want a new app. It died, but I still kept playing after work without problem. It makes me wonder how fast Teams would die if it wasn't proped up by 365 and Azure subscriptions.
- eru 7mo ago
  I wonder if Teams hates you, because they are doing the bidding of their actual customers (corporate decisions makers and purse holders), and those people's interests are not exactly aligned with the users'.
  - nine_k 7mo ago
    The problem is that these people holding the actual purse don't care enough about their subordinates' experience. They care about the price tag, and about compliance. Apparently the makers of Teams think about the same. None of them thinks in terms of lost productivity.
    - eru 7mo ago
      Yes, compliance is a big one. And it's not so much that they are actively hostile to user productivity (and quality of life), they just don't care enough.
- nozzlegear 7mo ago
  > we would struggle to decide where to meet up for the daily raids because people would basically not respond (so as t not commit), or not know which gym each other meant exactly, nor give live updates when people moved around, etc. etc. This kind of thing is so common in groups of people, it's one of my pet peeves. My own family does this in our group messages when trying to make big decisions like who should host thanksgiving or where we should go for a family vacation. I make it a point to just take charge and tell people that we're doing XYZ now. It usually either results in a decision, or gets the discussion going enough that I can do it again with new information.
  - theK 7mo ago
    That has roughly been my MO as well and it works great for groups where identities have settled. But one has to keep in mind that, in our currwnt "more woke" times, if you go this way in a new group you run the risk of being labeled an array of things. So tread carefully there.
do_anh_tu 7mo ago
I’ve been using Telegram for about 10 years, and it’s one of the few products that has consistently felt great the entire time. It’s fast everywhere: backend, mobile app, desktop app, all of it. Everything just works. Its sync is out of this world—fluid, fast, and seamless across devices. You can use it on your phone, then move to your PC or laptop and continue instantly without friction. Unlimited message history and file storage are fantastic, and the bot platform is absurdly powerful. It’s boring in the best way, which is exactly what you want from a channel for interacting with your agents everywhere.
- hallway_monitor 7mo ago
  Since we are apparently giving messaging platform reviews here, I feel exactly the same way about Microsoft Teams. It works great. It does everything I want. It doesn’t get in my way. 10 out of 10 keep up the great work guys!
  - ozozozd 7mo ago
    Username checks out?
  - dijit 7mo ago
    I don’t believe you. I would never accuse Teams of being fast. Doesn’t seem to matter if I have an i9, a macbook m4 or a threadripper.
    - badc0ffee 7mo ago
      I only use Teams for meetings and the calendar, and the occasional chat during a meeting. I find it totally fine and I don't really think about it much one way or the other. For reference I have a 2021 M1 Max with 64 GB.
      - deleted 7mo ago
        [deleted]
      - roywashere 7mo ago
almostdeadguy 7mo ago
Odious is one of the most reserved words you could use to describe Telegram, which is primarily a host for scams that the influencers and other bottom feeders aren't allowed to monetize on the big social networks.
onair4you 7mo ago
My employer keeps Slack so locked down it is not really possible to use anything useful with it anyway…
snthpy 7mo ago
I feel the opposite. I'm on Teams all day at work and have reluctantly opened Telegram recently to try a Claw despite having an account for years. I've been surprised how little support there has been for Teams in the whole AI ecosystem. It seems all developers assume that the whole world is at startups working on Slack when most businesses are on Microsoft 365.
- xeyownt 7mo ago
  Looking forward to seeing AI ranting about pesky bullets in Word.
- weird-eye-issue 7mo ago
  Compared to operating on text files (which is relatively very simple and something Claude Code is great for), I have a feeling it's kind of a disaster dealing with Microsoft integrations and the different file formats
- theshrike79 7mo ago
  Just the fact how much Microsoft lies when you click the "keep me logged in" button should tell you why nobody bothers with Teams integration with anything.
- dot_treo 7mo ago
  The main reason is just how hard it is to actually create anything that integrates with Teams. You have to jump through so meany hoops, wade through so many deprecated APIs, guess through so many half-way-wrong-by-now documentation pages. After building a proof of concept, we decided that we will only continue Teams integration if anyone is going to pay serious money for it.

revlolz 7mo ago

Telegram has a major issue with bots and bad actors though. They paywalled privacy features making it truly a terrible experience for users. 3-10 per day random messaging you.

rowanG077 7mo ago
Can't say I have had literally anyone ever message me on telegram. And I have been a daily user for years.
- Gigachad 7mo ago
  If you join public groups with a lot of users you end up on a bunch of spam lists and get smashed by bots.
- OJFord 7mo ago
  I get occasional spam - I'd guess it's because you've never joined a public group or shared your handle anywhere?
  - rowanG077 7mo ago
    I indeed never have joined a public group and never shared my handle with non-people I know.
- sunaookami 7mo ago
  It's especially bad when you have a public username that is also kinda popular. They made "hide chat and mute for unknown contacts" free at least...

informal007 7mo ago

Maybe most of users of anthropic are individual developers over employee in tech company. I'm really happy that they choose telegram and discord.

fragmede 7mo ago
You're telling me that Anthropic, one of the hottest companies on the planet right now couldn't field four teams of developers to integrate with Discord, Slack, Telegram, and Teams? AI being such a productivity multiplier, seems like they could just choose to do it all. I mean, mythical man month and all that, but do it three times and have a retrospective and use Claude to refactor the pain points and centralize the learnings.
- airstrike 7mo ago
  You'd be surprised....
- Forgeties79 7mo ago
  Turns out the companies making promises don’t exemplify the results of their promises lol
- whatever1 7mo ago
  Boris casually implements features and closes tickets the same day they are opened.

yen223 7mo ago

A lot of such cases. Claude itself had (has?) fewer users than Perplexity, let alone Meta AI, Gemini or ChatGPT

Marciplan 7mo ago
no they definitely did not have fewer users than Perplexity xD
- yen223 7mo ago
  I like Claude, but polling done on Americans late last year shows otherwise: https://epoch.ai/data/polling https://epoch.ai/data/polling Overseas numbers are likely worse for Claude. Try and ask someone not in tech what they think of Claude or Anthropic. There's a high chance they've never heard of either. Things might have changed with Anthropic showing up at the Superbowl, and in the news over their fight with the Pentagon.
  - borski 7mo ago
    Late last year is not the timeline you want. Anthropic’s hockey stick happened earlier this year.
    - yen223 7mo ago
      Late last year was like 3 months ago. I'm bullish on Claude. It will see a surge in users, and will likely surpass Perplexity this year. However I don't think it will catch up to even Meta AI (which had 10x the number of users) this year.
      - borski 7mo ago
        I’m aware of how long ago late 2025 was. Anthropic’s revenue in Q1 2026 has skyrocketed.
        7mo ago

miki123211 7mo ago

Telegram's bot API is literally one of the friendliest APIs (of any kind) I've ever seen. It's the first thing I reach for when server-to-mobile notifications are concerned. It's just as easy to set up as ntfy.sh, except that it doesn't break every other week on iOS.

vrosas 7mo ago
Interesting. I set up a bunch of slack webhooks for server events that's been working decently well but maybe I'll look at telegram.
- theshrike79 7mo ago
  Slack (and Discord) webhooks are good for just shooting one-sided data into channels, but for interactive bots Telegram is so far ahead of anyone else it's crazy. Signal specifically is missing any kind of official bot support, cutting off massive audiences from even considering it as an option.
ttul 7mo ago
This is so true. I don’t like Telegram for a host of reasons, but the bot architecture is second to none. Try creating a bot in Slack. You’ll pull your hair out for hours. Same goes for Discord. Utter nightmare. Telegram? You send a DM and it is basically done.
- baq 7mo ago
  Discord webhooks aren’t too bad… but the proper bot thing is ridiculous. They really lack a development mode server, having to know everything about oauth and token permissions before even starting is bonkers and why do I even need an app is beyond me. I’d probably have my bot completely implemented in telegram in the same time I figured out what an app is in discord and how to even add a new app to my server.
lxgr 7mo ago
Unfortunately, Telegram is also a no-go from a security/data privacy perspective for many use cases.

karlitooo 7mo ago

Surprisingly large number of businesses run on whatsapp, as a consultant in Asia it's prob around half the businesses I've worked with prefer it over teams/slack. If Meta had been sensible about API access Telegram wouldn't have even got a foothold.

tmatsuzaki 7mo ago
WhatsApp is actually more popular than Slack, isn’t it? In my country, almost everyone uses Slack, and I’ve hardly ever heard of any companies using WhatsApp, so that was surprising to me.
- yen223 7mo ago
  WhatsApp is more popular than Slack, Teams and Telegram combined. WhatsApp has something like 2-3 billion users worldwide WhatsApp vs Slack + Teams is a bit of an apples to oranges comparison though.
  - tmatsuzaki 7mo ago
    Living in Japan has made me realize how different cultures can be — even down to the apps and services people use. It honestly surprises me, and now I kind of want to try WhatsApp too.
    - benhurmarcel 7mo ago
      Honestly Whatsapp is nothing special. It works well, just like many other chat apps nowadays. The interest is that in some large parts of the world, everyone uses it already.
  - kelvinjps10 7mo ago
    The only thing it's that creating bots for whatsapp it's not as easy as for telegram and it cost money. Actually that is the business plan for whatsapp making money from whatsapp business

arjie 7mo ago

Telegram has the best programmatic integration. Trivial to get working. You can be up and running in minutes. I use it to talk to a claw-style agent and it's truly unbelievable what you get for free.

zerkten 7mo ago

One issue is that 95% of the integrations will be fine with the default configuration. The others including some with high profit potential will have weird configs that will frustrate your customers the first time they try if not well tested/documented. It's better to take time and get it right. Enterprise customers love piloting and spending time, so best to approach that the right way too. Going with less complex options, that arguably have better APIs, makes it easier to develop your core product too and get real feedback from users.

kelvinjps10 7mo ago

I think it might because telegram integration it's just easy to do, I don't use telegram for actually messaging, I use it just to deploy my bots, it's a simple way to build simple tools, in a few lines you can get something working, you can have commands that work like buttons, accept images, respond with images and don't need anything else than your telegram account

beoberha 7mo ago

Spend 5 minutes looking up how to make a chat bot and be amazed how Telegram is really the only option. I was dumbfounded when rolling my own agent. iMessage is proprietary. WhatsApp charges you. Unofficial APIs exist, sure, but not my cup of tea. Then you have Discord or Slack, which are pretty heavyweight when all you want is a simple chat interface. Telegram makes it SO easy. Bots are first class resources on Telegram and they make them so easy to use.

sroerick 7mo ago
XMPP is working pretty well for me

moostee 7mo ago

Twitter is shockingly irrelevant given how much it gets mentioned.

theshrike79 7mo ago
Twitter put all normal fun bots out of business with their API changes, that's about it.

ACCount37 7mo ago

Telegram is more popular among "normal people", and it also has a laissez-faire attitude towards bots and bot development. Making a bot that you, or even other people, could add to their contact list and use is pretty easy. It's wild, but "people who want to build and run their own one-off bot for something like home automation" are almost treated by Telegram like first class citizens.

miroljub 7mo ago

It's not even funny how a multibillion-dollar company with thousands of employees having unlimited access to the "world's best coding models" lags behind a small one-man [1] open source project that already had multiple plugins for the same feature [2] for months. Pi already has 700+ third-party packages [2] for various purposes of various quality. But it doesn't matter, since creating a new working Pi extension to suit your needs is just a prompt away, and you don't even have to restart your coding session. [1] Pi Coding Agent https://pi.dev https://pi.dev [2] https://www.npmjs.com/package/@e9n/pi-channels https://www.npmjs.com/package/@e9n/pi-channels [3] https://pi.dev/packages https://pi.dev/packages

elAhmo 7mo ago

Apples and oranges comparison, one is a messaging app, the other two are used for communication and collaboration across teams in a workspace. I have worked in 5+ companies who used either Slack and Teams, none used Telegram for any comms. Telegram is 'bot friendly' since the beginning, gaining a lot of users with crypto boom a decade ago with coin drops and things like that, so it is very good to develop for, but I have your initial sentiment first - shame this hasn't launched with tools people actually use for work. And no, Discord is not used for that either.

paxys 7mo ago

Not really a meaningful comparison. Telegram is a personal messenger while Slack and Teams are for work. Telegram should be put alongside WhatsApp, iMessage, WeChat etc., which all have user bases in the billions.