Telegram’s popularity exploded when Facebook announced it’s acquisition of Whatsapp in early 2014 raising security concerns among users, peaking 50 million downloads that day alone. Telegram is free and open source and has no advertisement what so ever!
Let’s take a look at the reasons to abandon whatever you become addicted to and switch to Telegram.
Who can you chat with in Telegram?
Much like Whatsapp and Viber, your contacts are your phone book contacts, and you can look users by user name as well.
You can talk to a single person or be a part of a group, and you can chat people using the secret chat feature.
Telegram features
Free and open source
When Whatsapp has been recently changed to become free, Telegram is free for life and has no ads what so ever (almost too good to be true!), while Viber has the sticker market which always wants you to buy the stickers.
Private
Telegram messages are heavily encrypted and can self-destruct, which is great for privacy (unless you are the parent of a teenager!) the most secure form of chatting you can have is provided by Telegram.
If the other person tries to take a screenshot of the secret chat, you will be notified! That’s amazing 🙂
Fast
Telegram delivers messages faster than any other application ( I still need to put this feature to the test), it tends to delay on SIM data but in general it’s fast!
Secure
Telegram keeps your messages safe from hacker attacks.
Powerful
Telegram has no limits on the size of your media and chats, while Viber and Whatsapp limit you to media files, you can send anything with Telegram! (Zip .MP3 .Doc) as big as you like!!
Cross platform / Cloud based
All of the popular platforms are supported, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, and in case that wasn’t enough, there is a web version. And you can access your chats from an unlimited number of devices you have, and the web version is independent, you don’t have to prove to be online to chat on your PC!
Download
Click on the platform you have and it will take you to the official app in the store (you don’t want to download an unofficial app).
Download for Windows Phone
After we looked at the awesome features, lets take a look at some things Telegram has:
As of August 2014 Telegram delivers 10 BILLION telegrams each day!
You can create a bot to do whatever you want (if you have the skills to do so) and this bot will fetch your email, check the weather or even play chess! Read more about it here.
You can enjoy strong and private chats with your friends and co-workers, create groups to chat more efficiently or even subscribe to channels.
Channels
This is the latest features added on September the 22th 2015
Channels are the latest way to deliver messages to an unlimited number of subscribers, where they can catch up to the latest messages and read all the message history, each channel has a view count and a members count. and for a better understanding of it subscribe to Telegram’s channel, and you can create your own channels right away as the new Android / iOS version will have this feature with the latest update, others are coming soon.
And before you ask, no it doesn’t support voice/video calls!
It’s not a VOIP application, it’s not a video chat application. It’s a chat application that does! They might add the VOIP option later, I don’t think it’s going to be free. So enjoy the incredible feature set.
Conclusion
I am happy to find a chat app that Facebook hasn’t got it’s claws on yet! Those guys are all over the place! Telegram is safe, secure. Totally free and completely awesome!
The possibilities are endless, and the development is ongoing!
Do you use Telegram to chat with friends and family? Please tell me your experience with it in the comments section below.
