Telegram Stars: Pay for Digital Goods and More
telegram.org
telegram.org
Even being able to have bot custom keyboards/buttons is pretty great
Edit: I found this [1] table that hopefully simplifies things, I'll see if that works out.
[1]: https://spec.matrix.org/v1.8/client-server-api/#mroommember
With telegram my partner doesn't need a license. They already use telegram
Python: slixmpp
Go: Mellium or go-xmpp
Rust: xmpp-rs
Java: Smack
Any platforms I missed?
There is also the Snikket SDK in development, which is still in its early stages, and designed for XMPP IM apps specifically (whereas most of the libraries listed above are generic and can be turned to any purpose). The SDK is still lacking a few big things like E2EE, but already has calls and some other stuff.
Edit: I should add that building a good messaging app is a lot of work (ask anyone who has tried it, regardless of protocol). If that's what you're doing, consider contributing to or at least starting with an existing project.
With federated systems, notifications are a big problem on iOS because the apps don't actually get to run in the background in the traditional sense. They can periodically "refresh", or they can be opened by a user, or they can be woken up by a notification. Notifications can only come from Apple, and can only come via Apple from the app's developer.
Even selfhosted Mattermost pushes notifications to users via the Mattermost organization's centralized APNS notification proxy. It's an annoying form of phone-home, and I think it may even leak message content to the publisher (because the notifications can contain message data).
If you self-host an XMPP server, you can't get realtime notifications of messages on iOS unless you have the app actively open and foregrounded so the app itself can maintain a connection to the server. The moment (or, actually, 15-20 seconds later) you lock your device, poof goes the connection.
XMPP is not end to end encrypted, and is a dying (and weird) protocol. If you're going to selfhost anything, Matrix (via dendrite or synapse or whatever the current state of the art is) is probably the correct answer.
You're quite right that a situation such as you describe (requiring the app to be open to receive messages) would be a horrible experience. Support for push notifications was a solved problem years ago.
The server support is irrelevant; this is an iOS/APNS issue.
Building a Telegram bot is incredibly easy, and a lot of digital services are more then capable of being handled in that format. Being able to easily charge for that built into the actual software library? Win-win to me.
I can only speak on Line. It has so many things built into it. Including: a news app, retail coupons, calling, messaging, payment (both in app and at retail). A few more extreme things the app offers: cellular plans, car/bike/home/life insurance, and brokerage services.
Another example of a “super” app, but one that’s not built off a messaging platform would be PayPay. It’s a popular QR code payment platform in Japan. It includes many of the services offered by Line but in a more integrated way.
Yellow stars are already used heavily in apps for ratings, favoriting, marking as important. And previously as stickers of approval on your childhood homework.
In the example animation of purchases, note all the exciting confetti and sunburst reward-like animations... for spending money.
Not only are they introducing a level of indirection over money (you're not spending real money, but some fun imaginary thing), but they're also appropriating and misusing a popular favorable symbol.
Just show what these things cost in familiar real money (or at least make it a stylized gold coin already), stop preying upon children, and stop manipulating adults.
"You didn't spend real money on pretend things today. Here's some confetti!"
Which real money? US dollars? Canadian dollars? Australian dollars? App is by Russians so maybe rubles? But their offices are in UAE so maybe dirham?
For a company looking to facilitate international transactions and storage of value… making their own “currency” actually doesn’t sound entirely unreasonable.
Content can be priced manually by region and currency, falling back to current exchange rate to seller's selected currency. (Of course, more dynamic pricing is possible, but that also has its own ethical issues to be careful of.)
Signal is good for E2E but not comparable in terms of convenience.
Really, telegram is being naked for 99% of the time, with an optional clothes feature that is limited and mobile only. Whereas signal is fully dressed, all the time.
Signal is 100% encrypted, all groups encrypted, all messages encrypted, all contacts encrypted. The vendor knows when your registered… that is all.
Of course people who don’t understand the sheer dystopia of cleartext coms and visible social graphs — They will say “when I need them “ I will encrypt. No, you must encrypt all the time. Messages must be indistinguishable. You don’t just encrypt the sensitive stuff, you should encrypt everything!
In other words, you want your chats with news and memes E2E by default, so when you chat about something sensitive you a) don't have to do anything, b) won't forget about it until it's too late and c) won't give away the fact that this particular conversation suddenly went private.
Telegram management is weirdly stubborn af in this regard. Which could be either "we know better" syndrome, simple ignorance, or even malice. They, however, undeniably know their ways with UX and marketing, so, once again, as in an old Russian proverb, we end up with a barrel of honey, with a spoonful of tar - the nicest-looking but crappily implemented tech always wins.
In my case it is not rare to prefer my conversations not to be stored in plaintext on someone else's computer
Seemingly.
Edit: They publicly oppose the Russian government - care to explain your down vote?
That's why I put Russian in quote marks :)
Yeah, I get the reply was meant to be punny.
So it's backed by Telegram's own cryptocurrency, or at least soon gonna be. reading this killed the little excitement I had.
With no E2EE except in unpractical, single-device "secret chats", it falls behind the majority of chat platforms (aside from Meta-owned ones, at least), and feels like a Western WeChat more than a place I would like my data to be owned by. Which is a shame because its UX is consistently great.