Telegram has always felt like the catch-up of the messenger apps. I don't know a single person who uses it.
Also, it adds many useful features that other messengers didn't always have and many still don't have, for example Saved Messages, Scheduled Messages, Spoiler Messages, Reply to Message, message formatting (bold, monospace, etc), just to name a few off the top of my head.
Oh, and it's end-to-end encrypted by default.
Telegram has a huge advantage versus WhatsApp: it's not Meta. Then the Telegram UI is really excellent.
When you tell people all your friends and family are using it and that's it's not from Facebook, they usually install it on the spot. Then they're hooked.
Except the government, as reported in the news.
Actually the only time I used it it's because I needed to chat with a Russian SaaS personnel.
Yeah, plenty have accounts, but nobody uses it to actually chat.
Everyone in my friend group is using it.
In terms of functionality, speed, fluidity of the interface everyone is trying to catch up to Telegram. And doing a half-assed job of it
Telegram is often praised here for their features that helped them to grow and made people keep using it. Something that Signal should consider doing.
They have 900million monthly active users.
Oh and I also use it for messaging sometimes. But my main use case is participating in various groups, like in a forum way. And my peer group does the same and I have not met a single person that uses telegram mainly for messaging. Most also have signal or whatsapp for that.
I would never trust in with any confidential information though.