Telegram now has a recommendation system
telegram.org
telegram.org
I think it's a pretty good sign that all these social media features continue to be added and I still don't see any impact on how I use Telegram.
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.
I know fewer than 5 people who have heard of Signal but almost all of my acquaintances have at least heard of Telegram. But nobody uses anything except WhatsApp.
LOL what?
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.
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.
What? I'm surprised of the positive feedback I'm seeing in the comments. To me (and to my bubble, comprised of mostly Eastern European devs) Telegram feels (and always felt) like hot garbage. Not sure exactly what Silicon Valley needs to learn from it, I think we've nailed down the recipe for shitty apps.
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.
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.
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.
It’s similar to the difference between physical products that feel well-considered and well built vs. creaky hollow glossy black plastic Walmart fare.
AFAIK Telegram investors (via debt bonds) are undisclosed, and I could not find a source backing that statement. Care to share?
You are confusing Telegram with Whatsapp. DST Fund managed by Yuri Milner is one of the biggest Facebook investors, at 12%.
See https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/world/yuri-milner-faceboo... for details on its Kremlin connections.
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.
Telegram in 2019 was perfect. None of the features added since then have been that great.
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.
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.
and assume you mean you've tried other somewhat-niche messengers, not just the major ones that get special treatment.
I do not like Meta, but I never experienced with whatsapp, that someone send a message and this message just vanishes, so the sender thinks he is getting ignored. But exactly this happened way too often with signal.
Whatsapp, being so popular, gets whitelisted. It has to work or people would be telling each other "don't buy Samsung!" (not unlike the situation with Huawai since the Play store got removed from their phones).
Messages getting lost entirely is a whole separate matter - so you got the two ticks telling you it'd been delivered, but nothing at the recipient's end? Was this a long time ago? I would stop using it too if I had that problem, I agree.
This is the matter I am mostly talking about. Everything else is annyance.
As far as I remember, it was mostly only 1 tick, but likely also an instance with 2 ticks (grey) - but no trace ever on the recipent.
It happened often during the peak of new users coming to signal, with the latest whatsapp drama ( I use signal since the beginning), but since then not that I am aware off. But it did erode trust for me and others, so I cannot safely recommend it anymore.
Like the other poster mentionied, you might have missed, that you missed things. It is sadly unreliable for me, too, which is just unacceptable with a messenger.