Telegram now has a recommendation system
33 points by MitPitt 1 year ago | 64 comments- brink 1 year agoI hope telegram knows the main reason that I and many other people use Telegram is because it doesn't have social media features like a feed. Now that they've finished creating the "perfect" messenger, every update looks more and more concerning as my favorite messaging app begins to look more and more like facebook.
- csydas 1 year agoI completely get your fear as I also don't really want non-chat features from Telegram, but I can pretty confidently say I don't think any of the new features have at all changed how I use the app. my chats work exactly like I expect them to with my friends and that's perfect. I don't see any of the more social media stuff unless I want to.
I think it's a pretty good sign that all these social media features continue to be added and I still don't see any impact on how I use Telegram.
- jwells89 1 year agoIn general, app feature creep is becoming increasingly tiresome. It’s sometimes ok for software to be “done”, with any further engineering instead going towards making the product ever-more rock solid. Nobody seems to realize this though.
- wayfinder 1 year agoIt's because these smaller products don't make money and will eventually die unless they figure something out.
I don't buy anything from Telegram. I don't see any ads. Yet I use its API and chat for a price of $0. Something has to give.
- ratg13 1 year agoWinZip is always the first thing I think of in this context.
- wayfinder 1 year ago
- itake 1 year ago+1. I like the anti-discoverability in Telegram, but I can see why they would need such a feature to grow their business.
- afavour 1 year agoI think Telegram has realised they've lost the 1 on 1 personal chat fight to Signal and they're pivoting to their emergent user base. Every time I hear about Telegram these days it's in a discussion about thousand-person broadcast chats and the like. If that is truly their main area of growth a feed to aggregate that kind of stuff does make sense.
- blehn 1 year agoDoesn't Telegram have like 10x the number of users that Signal has? Even if channels are popular I would imagine there's plenty of 1-1 and personal usage on Telegram. Data point of one: I use Telegram with about 20 contacts for personal messaging; I don't use Signal with anyone.
- hadlock 1 year agoSignal had a ton of users but then they disabled the ability to use it as your primary SMS app citing user confusion about which chats were encrypted vs which were not, SMS support was the killer feature for a lot of people. Since they dropped true SMS support I don't know anyone who still uses it.
- hadlock 1 year ago
- subtra3t 1 year agoMaybe in some countries they have lost the fight. But in many other countries, including India, Signal isn't even a part of the fight.
I know fewer than 5 people who have heard of Signal but almost all of my acquaintances have at least heard of Telegram. But nobody uses anything except WhatsApp.
- sertbdfgbnfgsd 1 year ago> I think Telegram has realised they've lost the 1 on 1 personal chat fight to Signal
LOL what?
- konart 1 year agoThis. Signal has its userbase, sure, on Firefox level. It _is_ there but barely noticeable.
- konart 1 year ago
- blehn 1 year ago
- golergka 1 year agoFYI, Telegram is currently one of the main social media platforms in Russia, which is their "domestic" market (the company is not legally in Russia, as well as it's developers and founder, but all of them are originally from the country).
- kornhole 1 year agoIt is the opposite for me. I use many decentralized E2EE messengers. Telegram is good for broadcasting certain topics such as war coverage, because it is not domiciled in a NATO country.
- phatfish 1 year agoThey probably don't make enough money from being a reasonable platform. It will just end up a Twitter hell-scape if trolls can find a community to torment/destroy more easily.
- tamimio 1 year agoSpot on, recent updates are mostly about useless stories and other BS, instead of that, how about making an E2EE by default?!
- hombre_fatal 1 year agoMeh, like it or not (I can guess which), Telegram has the best API in the game and it's amazing for businesses and all sorts of use-cases beyond chatting 1:1 with your friends. For example, its API lets you create buttons and nested applications within the app which certainly aren't there for you to talk with Billy from work.
So it makes sense that they build out more features for those use-cases like those using it as a media platform. I really like what they're doing. This is how you build a platform.
I'd be surprised if HNers are even aware of how other people use Telegram beyond basic chat. We tend to dismiss and hold disdain for use-cases we don't care about rather than learn about them earnestly.
- tortoise_in 1 year agoYou haven't heard of xmpp
- sam_lowry_ 1 year agoI certainly heard of death by extension, one XEP at a time.
- sam_lowry_ 1 year ago
- tortoise_in 1 year ago
- csydas 1 year ago
- ilrwbwrkhv 1 year agoTelegram is what software should be. Silicon Valley companies should learn a lot of things from them. How to build great features with great UX, branding and most important blazing fast performance. Our apps are so clunky in comparison.
- mathverse 1 year agoI disagree. Telegram is wonky and filled with bugs and weird UX decisions. It's a prime example of a platform that is just "good enough" but has no polish and added value.
- yesco 1 year agoHow surprising, I love using Telegram specifically because it feels so stable & polished across multiple platforms (including Linux). In fact , the UI/UX is so straightforward I was even able to successfully transition my friends and family to it and finally escape the tyranny of iMessage. What do you recommend as an alternative?
- pelagicAustral 1 year agoI've been using it since Meta acquired WhatsApp. Always on a shitty £300-tops Android phone and I have never experienced any bugs, or lag, or wonkyness... The UX is simply perfect. Especially compared to WhatsApp, which I now have to use because "the rest of the office uses it"...
- the_third_wave 1 year ago> Always on a shitty £300-tops Android phone
What is 'shitty' about a '£300-tops Android phone'? I never paid more than ~€200 for a new phone, my current 'daily' phone is a Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 pro from 2018 (running a de-fanged Google-free Android distribution) which still runs 2-3 days on a single charge and runs all apps I care to use. I don't consider this a 'shitty' phone in any way.
- the_third_wave 1 year ago
- 1 year ago
- yesco 1 year ago
- maximinus_thrax 1 year ago> Telegram is what software should be. Silicon Valley companies should learn a lot of things from them. How to build great features with great UX, branding and most important blazing fast performance.
What? I'm surprised of the positive feedback I'm seeing in the comments. To me (and to my bubble, comprised of mostly Eastern European devs) Telegram feels (and always felt) like hot garbage. Not sure exactly what Silicon Valley needs to learn from it, I think we've nailed down the recipe for shitty apps.
- mathverse 1 year ago
- sertbdfgbnfgsd 1 year agoIs anyone else impressed with how many features Telegram has while at the same time being so smooth?
My experience is that invariably the more feature the more sluggish an app.
I can only conclude that Telegram must have excellent developers, or otherwise a process that has figured something out.
- risyachka 1 year agoFeature and UX-wise telegram is the goat.
The only unfortunate thing is that one of its biggest investors is russian's government wealth fund.
Which makes you wonder why would they invest in it.
- klabb3 1 year ago> […] UX-wise telegram is the goat
Insanely so. Only Apple comes close from a “pleasurable” and physically snappy pov. A bit of an apples-oranges comparison, but still. Discord as well I guess but it’s nothing like telegram.
Telegram has this strong old-school “app-feel” in a world where everything else feels like an eventual consistency web app with 2 spinners going off at once for simple interactions (thin client with cloud-based source of truth). The details put in to even tiny things like transitions are well thought through, and they almost never feel intrusive or distracting. State is always fresh and no reloading is necessary.
Not saying I love everything about telegram, but their UX truly stands out, surprisingly even against big and well funded players like messenger.
- jwells89 1 year agoI think the main differentiator is that Telegram prioritizes responsiveness and feeling of “solidness” (no blinking frames when loading and the like) in a world where those things are usually written off as unavoidable casualties.
It’s similar to the difference between physical products that feel well-considered and well built vs. creaky hollow glossy black plastic Walmart fare.
- blharr 1 year agoDiscord calls are great, but the chat UX is awful in my experience. I'm curious, what do you like about it?
- klabb3 1 year agoYeah I guess the bar is pretty low these days. The UX is very confusing indeed but it is nice looking, snappy and has reduced visual clutter compared to similar apps, imo.
- klabb3 1 year ago
- jwells89 1 year ago
- MikusR 1 year agoThe only information about wealth fund i found is about them buying 2million worth of bonds second hand. That's about 0.04 percent.
- lloeki 1 year ago> The only unfortunate thing is that one of its biggest investors is russian's government wealth fund.
AFAIK Telegram investors (via debt bonds) are undisclosed, and I could not find a source backing that statement. Care to share?
- sam_lowry_ 1 year ago> russian's government wealth fund
You are confusing Telegram with Whatsapp. DST Fund managed by Yuri Milner is one of the biggest Facebook investors, at 12%.
See https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/world/yuri-milner-faceboo... for details on its Kremlin connections.
- klabb3 1 year ago
- weberer 1 year ago>To make discovering channels easier, when you join a channel, you'll now see a list of similar public channels.
There's no channel browser, but there's a similarity recommendation system? It seems a bit backwards. Right now channels are impossible to find without going through a third party site.
- jFriedensreich 1 year agoThe main reason i started using telegram was that it seems to be the only messenger that allows moving devices between android and ios as needed. Whatsapp and signal, basically lock you into one platform without any option to export or move accounts, which is really bewildering to me. (and no the whatsapp export feature is a scam to counter EU law but it does not work and the migrate to ios feature only works when whiping the ios device) But i have to say i am really amazed how great the app feels and works. Even stupid features like stickers that i never thought about before are so good i use them.
- anigbrowl 1 year agoSignal will let you export but not choose where to export to, so if you're running out of space on your phone and add an SD card to back up your signal database or export media, tough luck because the output destination is hardcoded. For your security, of course.
- jFriedensreich 1 year ago"Signal Export" is account metadata without messages and images! And the backup is encrypted, you need some third party tool to decrypt it and that does not work for me and i would not consider a company satisfying data portability laws if the export depends on compiling c++ from a third party. And if you just want to move your signal account from android to ios that wont help you either as its not possible to restore and android backup to an ios signal app.
- crtasm 1 year agoIf you first turn off backups, you should then be able to turn it back on and choose your SD card. My backups have always gone to my SD card.
- jFriedensreich 1 year ago
- anigbrowl 1 year ago
- yellow_lead 1 year agoI don't use the "social media" features either. I just use it for messaging. I'm fine with it if the social media features stay out of my way, but based on experience this will not be the case.
- ulrischa 1 year agoIn some days whatsapp will do the same thing I guess
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 1 year agoLike heroin, one taste of that sweet corrupting recommendation/ad revenue and they won't be able to stop.
- pikseladam 1 year agoalt messages on images is funny :)
- slim 1 year agokiller feature ▼
- andersrs 1 year agoI wish they'd fix that bug where Telegram Mac tries to apply app updates and gets stuck and you miss messages. But no clearly it's more important to force feed nasty social crap into people's eyeballs.