Messenger services for smartphones, tablets, or PCs are very popular. After all, you can use the programs to send messages to your friends a...
Telegram: On a secret mission
Security is becoming an increasingly important issue for messenger services. WhatsApp in particular is often criticized for the fact that the app stores a lot of user data and is supposed to forward it to the parent company Facebook.
Telegram takes a different approach here to guarantee you more security when handling your data. It starts with your own phone number. With WhatsApp, you have to compulsorily display the number when you create a profile. Accordingly, any user who is in a group with you can call or write to you without your consent. With Telegram, on the other hand, you have the option of hiding your own cell phone number. The other users only see the chat name that you set up yourself. Thus, the possibility of contact is only limited to the messenger service.
Another security measure is the destructible messages. If you want to send another user a message that contains, for example, sensitive data or a document that only the two of you should see, you can limit the lifetime of the sent message. This takes a few seconds to a minute.
After sending your message, the other user then has the set time to read your message and save the attachments. When the time has expired, your message will be destroyed by itself and can no longer be retrieved.
Telegram offers large chats with little space
With WhatsApp, you can open chat groups in which almost 256 of your contacts have space. That's a good size, but it's not always enough. For example, if you are organizing an event and want to inform other users about it, then only 250 users would not really be enough. Telegram makes it a little easier for you. Because the messenger has pumped up the size of the chats many times over. That means you can fit 200,000 users in a single chat group. This is a great advantage for clubs, associations, and organizers because you have to open fewer groups in order to write to all desired contacts.
But if you're worried that these large chats will quickly shrink your smartphone's memory, then there's additional good news for you. Unlike Messenger competitors, Telegram does not save your messages on your smartphone. Instead, you have cloud storage available where your chats are automatically stored with all attachments. In this way, you save a lot of space on your smartphone for other apps. On the other hand, cloud storage makes it much easier to move to a new device with the app.
With competitors like WhatsApp, you're always dependent on making a chat backup if you want to take your messages to a new device. With Telegram, you simply log in to the new device with your access data. Your messages are available to you again without you having to make any additional settings. This saves a lot of time and is easy on the nerves.
Face to face
For a long time, the messenger giant WhatsApp was ahead of Telegram in one respect. Until now, Telegram has only been able to write text messages or send voice messages. WhatsApp, on the other hand, introduced the video telephony function early on, with which you can invite other users to a video chat.
With the update to version 7.0, however, Telegram has caught up with the competition and now also allows you to make video calls. Small conference chats are also possible if you want to chat with several users at the same time.
Chat according to your own preferences
In contrast to other messengers, Telegram allows the installation of various extensions with which you can customize your chat usage even more. Among other things, you have the option of installing so-called bots. These are small additional programs that you can use, for example, to play music from Spotify directly in Telegram or with which you can customize the types of notifications. But you can also develop your own GIFs and emojis for your chats with the bots without much IT knowledge.
The integration of the bots is made possible, among other things, by the open-source code from Telegram. This means that the entire source code is freely accessible. This detail allows developers, among other things, to program new extensions for Messenger relatively easily and integrate them into the app. On the other hand, users can read directly what Telegram has for functions, which data may be accessed, and the like. So you can understand whether everything is going right with Messenger.
Telegram Web for PC – How it works
In addition to the app for iOS and Android, Telegram also offers a web solution. You can start this directly in your own browser without having to install additional programs. You just select the country you are currently in. Then enter the phone number with which you are active on Telegram. After that, you can start straight away.
The advantage of the web solution is that you can use it parallel to the normal messenger app on your smartphone or tablet. Although you can only be online from one device at a time, you can log in to Telegram on all devices. If you want to use the web solution with WhatsApp, this only works if you log in to the PC with your phone number. However, parallel use with the mobile phone is then not possible.
However, the functionality of the Telegram application is somewhat limited for your browser. You cannot access bots that you may have installed on your smartphone. However, all chat histories are loaded seamlessly, so that everything you write on the computer can be read later in the Telegram app.
The small flaw in Telegram
Even if Telegram outshines WhatsApp's competitors in many respects, the app has one weakness. You have not yet reached the mass of users with it that you could with WhatsApp. Telegram is still not well known for this. However, Messenger is still relatively young. As awareness increases, it may soon happen that more users migrate from the established WhatsApp to Telegram. In addition to the simple application and the higher level of security, the fact that there is no advertising on Telegram would also speak in favor of it - a topic that is always hotly debated on WhatsApp.
So it's worth giving Telegram a chance and supporting the growth of the app!
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