We love WhatsApp, it changes the way we communicate while leaving telcos scrambling to find out the next day they have almost completely lost their monetizing ability on SMS. While everyone is still coping with Facebook’s mind-blowing 19 billion dollar acquisition on WhatsApp, an alternative messaging app has been quickly gaining users across the world.
Founded by Nikolai and Pavel Durov (the brothers behind Russian biggest social network VK) in 2013, Telegram is a messaging app similar to WhatsApp that focus on security and privacy. If you are familiar with WhatsApp, you will find yourself getting used to Telegram quickly. Telegram is also blazing fast, from loading to viewing and sending messages, everything is about speed. Don’t take our word on it, you have to try it yourself to understand how significant the difference is.
[[perfectpullquote]]Telegram is so secure that they are challenging hackers to break that encryption[/[perfectpullquote]]
Telegram is not simply just a fast app, it is built with security in mind as well. Within the app, you have the option to start up a secret chat: an end-to-end secure chat that doesn’t reside on the cloud server plus you can set messages to self-destruct according to your preference. Telegram is so secure that they are so confidently challenging hackers to break that encryption and rewarding anybody who is successful $200,000 worth in BTC (Bitcoins).
Apart from being a messaging app, Telegram has opened up their API and protocol for developers. Telegram Desktop is a beautifully designed unofficial third party app for Windows and Mac OS X which works wonderfully well (except secret chat) making us wonder if iMessage would be in trouble. Other useful features on Telegram include native web images search, sending documents and contacts. Telegram is not all perfect though, there’s currently no way to send audio clips, no option to disable the “last seen” timestamp or change to a smaller font (only bigger).
Telegram Desktop for PC & Mac
Telegram is available free forever on both Android and iOS, there are quite a few unofficial ones for Windows Phone. There is a page on Telegram.org with a full list of unofficial apps. Telegram’s future is promising as long they can tweak it well to mass market in future updates, keeping things simple and snappy is what makes it so successful and we are hoping the people behind this brilliant app keeps it that way. The question now on everyone minds is will Telegram eventually replace WhatsApp longstanding position in our smartphones home screen? For some of us here, it already has.
