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What's all the fuss about Telegram? My Review
9 years ago
I'm sure you're all aware of the IM platform Telegram by now. Some describe it as the 'Skype killer' and it seems to be pretty popular amongst furries. Having seen many people using it at furry conventions to communicate, I thought I'd finally give it a try and see what all the fuss is about.
The first obstacle with Telegram is the most annoying one, and immediately makes me question whether it's going to be a viable alternative to Skype for many people. Telegram forces you to register with a mobile phone number. You simply cannot join without one. This is what made me dismiss it completely at first, but I eventually got myself a new £10 SIM card and basic phone to use with it, in order to avoid leaking my real phone number (some furries like privacy, you know!) You can set an authentication password and a recovery email for your account, but that's just a backup. You always have to get an authentication code delivered to your phone to log in. Why do they force people to do this, and not just allow registration with an email/password like every other platform that ever existed? I don't know, and I don't like it.
After that, the next most stupid omission from the Telegram feature list is plainly visible. It has no friends list. Yes, you heard me right. No way to save contacts. If you have friends' numbers saved in your phonebook and you're using the app, then it integrates with that, but if you're using the PC/web client then of course there's no phone book. And, of course, most people will not have each other's numbers anyway, so the whole thing breaks down. The only way to keep people easily accessible is to NEVER close your conversation with them. For people like me, who want to close old conversations to keep their screen nice and tidy, this is absolutely awful. Even Discord, which has only been around for half the time and is primarily focused on gaming clans, has recently introduced a full friends list and PM feature.
Next on my list of annoyances is the status system. There are none! Yep, they couldn't even be bothered with that either. The only status is 'online' and that status only works when your contact actually has the app in the foreground. If it's running in the background, the online indicator disappears immediately, effectively rendering them as offline. You can check when a contact was 'last seen' but since there's no way to sort your conversations list (not a friends list, remember?) by status or last-seen time, this is practically useless, and I would basically need to manually scan through every single conversation to get an idea of who is (potentially) online before talking to them. Seriously, guys? As an aside, Microsoft has been doing a great job of screwing up Skype statuses on tablets and mobiles, but that's another story.
Finally, stickers. The one thing that makes Telegram sort-of special. They're basically images that you can throw into a conversation to spice things up. Once you see one, you can click it to see the full set, add it to your own sticker collection, and share with others. However, there's no way to browse or search sticker collections on Telegram! That means you either have to make your own, or ask your friends to throw a bunch of sticker links at you. Alternatively, you can use a bunch of third-party websites that people have made to work around the issue. You'd think they would make a bigger deal about their one 'killer feature'.
So, let's compare some more features. Let me know if I've missed something!
(The below table is horribly formatted because FA doesn't support tables or even code blocks. Lame.)
Feature ................................ Skype Discord Steam Telegram
Sign up using email ............ Yes ... Yes ..... Yes .... No
Friends list ...........................Yes ... Yes ...... Yes .... No
Statuses ...............................Yes .... Yes ..... Yes .... No
Group chats ........................ Yes .... Yes ..... Yes .... Yes
Voice chat ........................... Yes .... Yes ..... Yes .... No
Inline images/links ............. No .... Yes ..... No ..... Yes
Emoji ................................... No .... Yes ..... No ..... Yes
Custom emotes/stickers .... No .... No ...... Some . Yes
Mobile apps ....................... Yes .... Yes ..... Yes .... Yes
From what I've tested so far, I don't understand why this particular new-and-shiny product is getting all the attention. I have many more gripes about it, but that would double the length of this journal, so the TL;DR of it is: Telegram is a poor-man's attempt at instant messaging, and Telegram for PC is like a poorly made console port of a game to PC.
What do you guys think? Which platforms do you prefer?
The first obstacle with Telegram is the most annoying one, and immediately makes me question whether it's going to be a viable alternative to Skype for many people. Telegram forces you to register with a mobile phone number. You simply cannot join without one. This is what made me dismiss it completely at first, but I eventually got myself a new £10 SIM card and basic phone to use with it, in order to avoid leaking my real phone number (some furries like privacy, you know!) You can set an authentication password and a recovery email for your account, but that's just a backup. You always have to get an authentication code delivered to your phone to log in. Why do they force people to do this, and not just allow registration with an email/password like every other platform that ever existed? I don't know, and I don't like it.
After that, the next most stupid omission from the Telegram feature list is plainly visible. It has no friends list. Yes, you heard me right. No way to save contacts. If you have friends' numbers saved in your phonebook and you're using the app, then it integrates with that, but if you're using the PC/web client then of course there's no phone book. And, of course, most people will not have each other's numbers anyway, so the whole thing breaks down. The only way to keep people easily accessible is to NEVER close your conversation with them. For people like me, who want to close old conversations to keep their screen nice and tidy, this is absolutely awful. Even Discord, which has only been around for half the time and is primarily focused on gaming clans, has recently introduced a full friends list and PM feature.
Next on my list of annoyances is the status system. There are none! Yep, they couldn't even be bothered with that either. The only status is 'online' and that status only works when your contact actually has the app in the foreground. If it's running in the background, the online indicator disappears immediately, effectively rendering them as offline. You can check when a contact was 'last seen' but since there's no way to sort your conversations list (not a friends list, remember?) by status or last-seen time, this is practically useless, and I would basically need to manually scan through every single conversation to get an idea of who is (potentially) online before talking to them. Seriously, guys? As an aside, Microsoft has been doing a great job of screwing up Skype statuses on tablets and mobiles, but that's another story.
Finally, stickers. The one thing that makes Telegram sort-of special. They're basically images that you can throw into a conversation to spice things up. Once you see one, you can click it to see the full set, add it to your own sticker collection, and share with others. However, there's no way to browse or search sticker collections on Telegram! That means you either have to make your own, or ask your friends to throw a bunch of sticker links at you. Alternatively, you can use a bunch of third-party websites that people have made to work around the issue. You'd think they would make a bigger deal about their one 'killer feature'.
So, let's compare some more features. Let me know if I've missed something!
(The below table is horribly formatted because FA doesn't support tables or even code blocks. Lame.)
Feature ................................ Skype Discord Steam Telegram
Sign up using email ............ Yes ... Yes ..... Yes .... No
Friends list ...........................Yes ... Yes ...... Yes .... No
Statuses ...............................Yes .... Yes ..... Yes .... No
Group chats ........................ Yes .... Yes ..... Yes .... Yes
Voice chat ........................... Yes .... Yes ..... Yes .... No
Inline images/links ............. No .... Yes ..... No ..... Yes
Emoji ................................... No .... Yes ..... No ..... Yes
Custom emotes/stickers .... No .... No ...... Some . Yes
Mobile apps ....................... Yes .... Yes ..... Yes .... Yes
From what I've tested so far, I don't understand why this particular new-and-shiny product is getting all the attention. I have many more gripes about it, but that would double the length of this journal, so the TL;DR of it is: Telegram is a poor-man's attempt at instant messaging, and Telegram for PC is like a poorly made console port of a game to PC.
What do you guys think? Which platforms do you prefer?
But for me, the lack of ads, bloat and its simplicity are what make me love it. Skype can lag out my phone for *minutes* telegram is like *bam* open.
There are various methods you can use to block ads completely on Skype for PC to render it harmless and quite pleasant to use. Such methods will not work on mobile, sadly.
As for mobile numbers, as long as you never lose that number, you should be safe... But the point is, it's not necessary and so it shouldn't be required!
XD
Facebook's value is based on the information they got about you, address, PHONE NUMBER, what school you went, your actual location (check in), what you likes, etc. All these information worth money and can be resell.
Now in order to get something free like Telegram, without adds, you need to pay somehow. I know, paying to get something free don't make sense, but it's how things works in this world. Skype is free as they send you adds, Telegram is free because you give them your phone number. Every bit of privacy you giveaway is just like a payment.
Telegram is lightweight, fast and reliable so far. The interface is basic, maybe a bit too simple.
As for the sticker, you can go on their website and download some. Of course you have to search a little and you'll only have access to those that have been submit on the website. When you do a sticker or full library, you can publish it so you can use it and if you want it, submit it to Telegram website.
Given how long Telegram has been around relative to Discord, they should have far more features, but they currently seem to be sitting around doing nothing. The web client developers are especially lax when it comes to bringing in improvements.
Is there actually an official page for seeing all published stickers on Telegram? All I see is the sticker FAQ page and the blog entry that points you to the stock 'Great Minds' and 'Animals' sticker sets.
The phone number thing is only for setting it up. You can put in a display name in the settings then check to hide the phone number. Just using the display name to give to other users.
After that, I see pretty well much the same sort of trouble you are having with it. Unless its the only means to communicate with others online, I would prefer to use Skype over everything else that I use. Mostly cause I have Skype always running and don't have to switch servers like I do with Discord for communications there.
In addition to that, people in the furry fandom or those that want better privacy MUST NEVER use their real mobile number when signing up for Telegram. The reason is that anyone else who has that number in their phone's contact list and uses Telegram will immediately see your Telegram profile on their list when they sign in. For example, a work colleague asks for your number. You sign up for Telgram with that number. They also use Telegram for regular social stuff. Bam - you're exposed. Or maybe even Bam - you have exposed them! I wonder how often that's happened already.
'Switching servers' with Discord? You mean tabbing to it? Because you can definitely see all your servers at once via the UI, along with the friends/PMs tab on the left. No different to switching conversations in Skype IMO, but maybe I misunderstood.
I'd like to see Telegram succeed (after all, Skype is dying at the hands of MS), but they have a long way to go to win me or other power-users over, and you too by the looks of things!
Plus the stickers, its unique thing, I actually don't like at all. They're huge, and people just tend to spam them in group chats, completely disrupting any conversation that had been going on.
Though despite that, group chats are the only thing I've found it useful for at all. Which means it winds up being little more than a "new" IRC client that has inline image linking. Otherwise it's comparable to phone SMS, not a proper IM service. The whole thing really just winds up feeling like a big fad to me.
I always found Skype group chats to be sufficient and just as convenient as Telegram's. Even Steam multi-person chat is just about tolerable if you want a temp group. If you're after an IRC replacement, though, Discord is definitely THE product of choice, hands-down.
AFAIK this isn't a system designed to compete with IM networks; it's designed to compete with texting.
You're trying to make it be an IM service when it's a texting service, so nothing really lines up.
"Register with an email? But I'm trying to chat with my friend and we're both on phones, thats a waste of time when I already have their phone number. All the other apps on my phone don't need some slow registration process."
"Why would I need a separate friends list when my phone already has my friend listed as a contact? That's like having two of the same friends lists"
"If I want to find a friend I dont have, I can just search for their telegram name and then add them to my contacts! That's much faster than a separate friends list that uses emails or whatever"
"Why would it need an online status? I always carry my phone with me!"
"An online status sounds weird-- friends already know when I was last looking at the app, and the app already notifies them when I've viewed their messages, if it shared even -more- info that would be really intrusive when I am already checking my phone repeatedly all day!"
But the real answer is that Stickers are the superior form of communication and you must learn to communicate with stickers :V
If Telegram was truly just a mobile app, it wouldn't be a problem (and I wouldn't even be using it). The problem is that everyone is ditching Skype (which IS primarily an IM network) in favor of it, even though it's incapable of fully emulating one yet. That's the root of pretty much every subsequent problem below.
Registering with a phone number is fine, but it shouldn't be required. An email is just as valid. As an aside, other apps may not appear be tied to an email from the user's point of view, but they may be intrinsically linked to your Google or Apple account.
Contact lists do not exist outside of a mobile operating system. Therefore, one should be provided when porting the app over to PC.
Searching for users only works when you know their username, but of course, many furries go by different names everywhere (and change them at will). This is why a friends list (and friend aliases) are needed.
Telegram does a fair job of tracking when people were last online, but doesn't actually give users the ability to sort their 'contacts' by this, and therefore, as mentioned above, you are forced to manually iterate over every contact to get an idea of who's actually likely to be around. Contrast with every other platform, which hide offline friends and bring online contacts to the top so you can interact with them immediately.
And yes, stickers are pretty much the only unique feature that makes it stand out IMO. I have no complaints about it (though animated stickers and searching the global sticker sets would be cool). As another aside, I'm sure you remember that MSN had 'stickers' in the form of custom emoticons almost a decade ago, so it's not exactly new. RIP MSN. Most of us would still be using that if it was still supported by MS and brought to mobile.
Or, maybe more accurately, furries just want funny stickers and Skype's emoticons cannot hold a candle to it-- so they would go to any system that matched such sticker powers :>
Though overall I think your experience was especially biased towards negative by specifically spending money to try a free platform :V