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Comment by stabbles | Hacker News Reader

And one day later close to none of them are messaging over Telegram

We'll see. The long-term behavior is what's more important. Now those users have the app downloaded, have it set up, and many have tried it out in a real way. All of those are major barriers to adoption, and Telegram has now overcome those barriers. I see that as significant even if it does not result in immediate full adoption of Telegram.

Indeed. And don't forget how well Telegram works compared to the competition. If anything will draw them away on convenience grounds (rather than some moral high ground, which was apparently not convincing enough or these new users would have installed an alternative sooner) it will be Telegram.

Messaging systems "working well" primarily means "the people I want to talk to are using it". Operational failures are a level-zero hurdle to pass, and after that it's all network effect.

I would agree that it's mostly network effect, but I don't agree that it's all network effect. How the app or service works and feels does count, at least a bit.

Operational failures are honestly not a big factor unless they happen often. Facebook has had 2 such failures now in the past 3 years. Will this really cost them users? No. WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, and Apple's Messages have all had approximately that same level of reliability.

Indeed. One reason I don't use Element/Matrix much is that I barely know anyone with an account (on any homeserver). The other reason is that it's unstable and missing features, so I won't be recommending this to any but the greatest of nerds. A bad user experience does matter.

I've seen this comment repeated about 4 or 5 times in the last 30 minutes. HN is not a place for vacuous and lame comments like these.

Maybe, but now they have an alternative installed on their phones/laptops.

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