I don't get how HN are working. I've submitted that exact URL 12 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=SergeAx
Me neither, if you find the answer share it please hahahah
Telegram Ad Platform
141–150 of 256 posts
Re: Telegram Ad Platform
#142Here's hoping there will be a way to pay for no ads. But a question to HN: why have we not seen a mass-market adoption of a P2P, non-centralised messaging system that requires no external services to work? Mesh and other sorts of networks are cumbersome and have not reached mass-market adoption, so what (technically) is stopping a true E2E P2P platform?
Session https://getsession.org/
Electron desktop client instantly disqualifies it as a Telegram Desktop competitor. Telegram Desktop is probably the best example of how desktop software should be built.
Re: Telegram Ad Platform
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think Pavel isn't sweating about 5% of his net worth being tied up in an extremely popular passion project of his. Telegram isn't really just a messenger, it's an anti-censorship system. In fact, Telegram's burn rate would have to increase by roughly 3,000 to 5,000% for it to even make a yearly dent in his fortune, assuming he's invested in any kind of reasonable mix of assets.
If you're using the 17B net worth figure (the one reported by Forbes), it is mostly just based on Telegram's quoted-valuation jumping to 30-40B. A lot of his net-worth is telegram equity at this point, and he's using debt financing to keep telegram operational. The burn rate was "few hundred million dollars per year", as per Durov a year ago. Telegram has grown 50-60% in users since (350M->550M as per the graph on Wi…
You're probably right, I stand corrected.
One extra point is that burn rate was likely a fraction of that figure for most of Telegram's history when it was much smaller. Telegram really only exploded to meteoric heights within the last few years.
50-60% increase in users also isn't necessarily indicative of a similar rise in expenses. The cost to store files and stream them has basically only ever gone down, and you can easily cut service costs by optimizing data storage, archiving content etc.
Loading content from years ago on Telegram is very slow, indicating heavily optimized tiered storage. They're clearly optimizing for burn rate to some extent.
Re: Telegram Ad Platform
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Any Telegram users here? Telegram vs Whatsapp use today is sort of a Shibboleth. Those who only use Whatsapp are typically lax about privacy and security, whereas Telegram users typically take these thing seriously. So those who target the vulnerable are definitely focusing on Whatsapp right now. The self-selection is working very well in Telegram's favour, though that probably is just a happy side effect.
>whereas Telegram users typically take these thing seriously. And yet they don't mind the lack of encryption?
Can we stop comparing the lack of default-on e2ee in Telegram to "no encryption"? There is transport encryption in MTProto since the beginning. There are e2ee chats for those who want them.
Re: Telegram Ad Platform
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Matrix is, unfortunately, a UX catastrophe compared to Telegram. Telegram has the best messaging app by UX and it's not even close. It's fast, reliable and it just works. Try getting your mother to use Matrix. Verifying sessions of chat participants is such a disgusting user experience I wonder if they employ /any/ graphic or UX designers.
Matrix is an open protocol and anyone's welcome to build a front-end, inspired by Telegram, that your mother would be happy using. Perhaps you meant the Element client?
I'd wager you cannot build a Telegram-tier frontend using Matrix technology. Element is evidence of that.
Clearly there's an axis with security on one side and convenience on the other. Tilting fully to either side results in a terrible experience. For me, Telegram strikes the perfect balance. Secure chats have fantastic privacy, while the UX isn't totally garbage. The trade-off is that chats are non-E2EE by default.
Signal's has the axis tilted all the way to the "security" end, so that the product is unusable if you aren't a technical expert already.
Could your mother figure out how to encrypt an email message using GnuPG? Absolutely not a chance.
Could she figure out how to send a message on ProtonMail that encrypts it client-side for her? Probably.
Signal is GnuPG. Telegram is ProtonMail.
Re: Telegram Ad Platform
#146The level of uptake of this FSB offshoot platform is surprising.
why? it is functionally supperior to the CIA offshoot platform everybody else uses.
Re: Telegram Ad Platform
#147> Unlike other apps, Telegram doesn't track whether users tap on a sponsored message and doesn't profile them based on their activity. I wonder how this will go down with advertisers used to the usual pay-per-click and being able to demographically target their audience before spending their ad dollars.
Well, there’s still a way to target topics & languages, as well as specific channels.
Re: Telegram Ad Platform
#148Re: Telegram Ad Platform
#149I hope this works for telegram! They were going to need to launch ads at some point and this transparent plan to get started seems like it considered the user base. It’s become my favorite messaging app and I enjoy the pace of innovation. I get it’s not end to end encrypted but that’s not what I am asking for with telegram - just a decent messaging app that makes it easy to remain anonymous (not sharing phone number)…
> not end to end encrypted but that’s not what I am asking for with telegram Why not? Why allow any third party to collect data on you and store it for an unlimited time?
It has some convenience tradeoffs. E.g. I can read the same chat on phone and desktop without hiccups.
Re: Telegram Ad Platform
#150I hope this works for telegram! They were going to need to launch ads at some point and this transparent plan to get started seems like it considered the user base. It’s become my favorite messaging app and I enjoy the pace of innovation. I get it’s not end to end encrypted but that’s not what I am asking for with telegram - just a decent messaging app that makes it easy to remain anonymous (not sharing phone number)…
Yes telegram is so much better than WA from a customer's point of view. The best thing I like about it is that it's an instant setup on every phone and doesn't require the Google backup integration which can take an hour to restore. Also the fact I can run it on multiple devices simultaneously is also kind of a big deal. Their API is also pretty amazing tbh. I wish all my friends were on tg instead of wa and i would…
Not all about Telegram is golden however.
At some point last year, amidst the skyrocketing popularity of the app and WhatsApp coming under heat for various reasons, someone at Telegram thought of a fantastic (read: user-hostile) way to "increase engagement" - Show a persistent panel on the home screen with the name of every contact on your phone who uses Telegram, in the hopes that you would click one of them and engage them in a conversation.
It's such a wild invasion of UI that it continues to blow my mind that it was greenlit. The panel cannot be disabled and lives right underneath your chat list where it has no business of appearing. They refused to remove it or at the very least, make it optional, and instead asked everyone to use their suggested workaround which, spoiler alert, isn't applicable for a large userbase [1]. I had to revoke "Contacts" permission to get rid of the panel.
This single change has made me quite bitter about the direction of Telegram.