Been using Telegram for years along with WhatsApp, Signal and Line.<p>Can without doubt say that Telegram nails it when it comes to user interface, features and userfriendliness. Girlfriend loves their animated stickers.<p>Their bot-api is easy to use as well, created a echo-bot in no time.
Only thing that annoys me is the lack of encrypted groups, but no one is really concerned about it.
Big pros of telegram compared to wa:<p>1. So easy to migrate. Wa restore can take up to an hour from gdrive, telegram is ready as soon as it is installed<p>2. It's always on everywhere, i.e. when i open web.telegram.org or desktop qpp it just connects instantly, web.whatsapp otoh requires my phone to be connected, takes forever to start and fails half the time.<p>3. I can restore year old file on tg while wa fails unless i have it in a backup.<p>4. The api. So easy to implement and such amazing bots. Just search skeddy for an example.<p>5. Huge groups. Our housing group has 1100 members, don't think its possible on wa<p>Biggest con compared to wa:<p>1. An amazingly bonehead feature that fills up my inbox: it has tell me x or y has joined telegram with a red badge. Seriously and i would care why? I add hundreds of people to my contact list. I can't even turn off this feature.
On thing I love about Telegram is how easy the bot API is. Anytime I need a quick personal CLI to a service that works on mobile, I can get it running in no time. For example, I wrote a script to check flight prices and send me a telegram message when it hit a certain threshold.
Telegram develops and launches new features the fastest among the popular messaging apps. It’s kinda unbelievable how fast it moves the needle and leaves the rest far behind. Look at the newly launched Telegram Tips channel to see all the features it has, explained with animations and text.
a FAQ from telegram's author from a couple days ago:
<a href="https://t.me/durov/146" rel="nofollow">https://t.me/durov/146</a>
Can someone comment on the Russian angle/ownership of Telegram.
Please, not trying to start a flame war but as a US person I’m trying to gauge if I should consider using it or not.<p>I don’t care about features, mostly care about security and privacy.