If you haven't yet heard of Telegram, now you have 🙂 Telegram is a rapidly growing cross platform messaging app with support on Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Windows, Mac, Linux and a web version. Apart from being cross platform, Telegram has a simple yet powerful API which allows for full integration with your apps. To give you an idea of just how quickly Telegram is growing, have a look at the following graph:
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Telegram's growth curve is on par with that of WhatsApp, and only time will tell as to whether this rate of growth will continue. What I find quite fascinating is that Telegram has achieved this rate of growth despite WhatsApp having almost complete domination of the instant messaging scene. The question is why? Here are a couple of reasons I think could attribute to its popularity:
- Cross platform
- An API !! 🙂
- Video voice notes
- Heavily focused on security and privacy
- 5000 member group limit
- Channels which allow you to broadcast a message to unlimited users
A neat piece of functionality I quite enjoy on my Android is the ability to hold in the mic button, slide it upwards, speak at will, and when complete simply press the send button. This is useful when multitasking and you don't feel like holding in the mic button until done with voice note. Sadly one needs to hold in the mic button on the desktop version. See a screenshot from my mobile below:
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Although still gaining traction, I believe in a couple of years Telegram will be a force to be reckoned with.