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Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

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Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#201

Post by Ericson2314 »

josu wrote: post #154

The founder's response to the article: Why users shouldn’t worry about ads on Telegram I read an article that cautioned users from switching to Telegram from other apps, because "Telegram is going to introduce ads". This is misleading for at least 3 reasons: 1. There will be no ads in chats on Telegram. Users who rely on Telegram as a messaging app, not a social network, will never see ads. Private chats and group ch…

Those are the types of promises one should never trust profit-seaking enterprise to keep, though.

The only way to to be accountable to users is to remove the profit motive, or charge a fee to use.

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#202

Post by ash »

AndriyKunitsyn wrote: post #145
ash wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author of the parent comment specifically mentioned "change in privacy update" as the reason to switch. Until WhatsApp drops end-to-end encryption, there's not that much evil they can do. They can't read your messages. You don't need to trust WhatsApp (so far). Telegram can have the best privacy policy, but they can always read your messages. You have to trust Telegram to do the right thing. (Except those few who…

You have to trust WhatsApp, because it is closed-source. Nothing stops them from planting a backdoor and enabling it specifically on your device, or from updating the E2E protocol to make it insecure. If your threat model includes WhatsApp/Telegram developers, you can't use WhatsApp but you can actually (carefully) use Telegram's E2E chats, because Telegram's client is an open-source app with reproducible builds. E2E…

Closed source WhatsApp is a problem. And a backdoor is possible. However, it's still detectable, albeit not easily. I'm sure researchers are closely looking at WhatsApp binaries. WhatsApp backdoor would be a scandal.

Sure, open source WhatsApp would be better. However, we are comparing detectable potential backdoor with totally undetectable existing access to all non E2E chats on Telegram servers. Telegram developers can already see everything right now. (By the way, opt-in E2E encryption is almost useless. Encryption should be the default, and enabled for group chats too.)

Between these two options WhatsApp situation is clearly better.

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#203

Post by eptcyka »

fsflover wrote: post #191
perardi wrote: post #60

I quite like Telegram, because I am apparently an old man at the age of 37, and I greatly prefer typing on my real physical keyboard, and not on my phone. Telegram’s desktop client for Mac is great—it’s fast, it has feature parity with mobile clients, and it works . Messages get delivered and stay in sync, and I don’t need to somehow link my phone to my main machine via QR code to act as a gateway. And if they introd…

> it has feature parity with mobile clients There are no secret chats though.

The native macOS client (not the Qt port) does have secret chats. Or at least it used to. The only other platform besides Android and iOS.

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#204

Post by Aachen »

Aloha wrote: post #149

I'm an early adopter for telegram, and I'd be glad to give them some money. I signed up in 2014, basically the first or second time it hit HN, and over time, I've built out a pretty decent social network on there, and run a dozen or so specialty community chats. I'd be glad to pay them something, 25 a year or so, even if I don't get anything special from it (though, if I did want something, it'd be better access to s…

Same. I've started moving away since a few months, though, because the revenue model was not happening and I can see how well it works compared to even a big commercial undertaking like Facebook messenger or Slack. The software development alone must cost many millions, not to mention the movies people are sharing actively.

It is (was?) getting super super fishy, given that everything is plain text (they have some tricks to claim it's not, but the bottom line is that they can read all your chats except that experimental "secret" chat or two you might have). If I can start to pay for the service, perhaps it's worth considering, though the lack of encryption is almost equally worrying. The branding is privacy, but the reality is the exact opposite, and while there used to be hope that they would eventually implement it, I've given up on any encryption being forthcoming by now.

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#205

Post by ZephyrBlu »

Waterluvian wrote: post #24
tw04 wrote: post #2

Do they really need advertisers? I'm not sure why all these companies think the whatsapp route isn't possible. People are happy to pay a small yearly subscription for apps if they're truly doing something useful. While I don't personally use telegram, I'd argue it falls into the category of "useful enough to pay for".

These startup social apps that run on a loss are heavily, intensely focused on user count as a KPI. I wonder if that leads to them balking at the reality that once you start charging money you'll lose a % of your users (which should be normal and fine!)

> which should be normal and fine!

It shouldn't be normal and fine, because a large part of the value derived from social apps is the network of people using the app.

Charging money means adding friction, which will mean a lot less people use the app and thus it's value is significantly reduced.

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#206

Post by eptcyka »

vinay427 wrote: post #193
schoolornot wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish my buddies who are hung up on Signal's E2E, and rightfully so, would at least try Telegram to see what they are missing. An E2E-default version of Telegram would put the final nails in Signal if you ask me. The decision to resist this, and they could implement it fairly beautifully for new devices like iMessage does, and the in-house MTProto protocol do seem kind of bizarre to me. But look how far it's taken t…

I'm honestly not sure what I'm missing when avoiding Telegram's non-private conversations. There's no desktop client support (unlike Signal which works on a desktop mostly seamlessly, including group video) and no option at all to backup and sync conversations between devices (unlike Signal's rather limited options). If I was alright with Telegram's non-E2EE conversations, I would prefer WhatsApp for its wider adopti…

What do you mean, no desktop client support? There's a fully featured desktop client for Telegram, and I've never had my desktop clients have their sqlite database corrupt itself.

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#207

Post by eptcyka »

Angostura wrote: post #139
schoolornot wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish my buddies who are hung up on Signal's E2E, and rightfully so, would at least try Telegram to see what they are missing. An E2E-default version of Telegram would put the final nails in Signal if you ask me. The decision to resist this, and they could implement it fairly beautifully for new devices like iMessage does, and the in-house MTProto protocol do seem kind of bizarre to me. But look how far it's taken t…

Signal user here, on iOS and using the Mac client. What am I missing?

Ability to send pictures without lossy compression, for one. Scheduled messages, group chats that preserve history (allowing one to rotate a phone number without losing access to history). Video calls that allow one to sync the video orientation. UX that is just better designed for the lay person (at least as far as my rudimentary a/b testing goes).

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#208

Post by nine_k »

theleftfielder wrote: post #194
tazjin wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram's clients are amazing (including the ones developed by the community, such as telega.el for Emacs). It is miles ahead of any other messenger in the UX department. Friends of mine who have (reluctantly, in some cases) tried it out quickly got stuck because of this single point. The other thing it's got going for it is that its protocol is designed to work in low-bandwidth environments. Yeah, the protocol look…

It's funny to see this towards the top of the comments here. Feels like not that long ago that Telegram updates would be downvotes on HackerNews because "you should never trust an app that designed their own encryption protocol."

This is not about encryption; I personally do not rely much on Telegram encryption being bulletproof.

It's about the right UX choices. Speed is a first-tier feature.

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#209

Post by mercacona »

sim_card_map wrote: post #180
izacus wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram actually provides a fully featured C++ library you can just include - it has a pretty good API that does most of the complex things for you. You just register callbacks for message lists / chat messages and notifications and you're all set. This allows people to easily build full-featured clients for pretty much any platform and it makes it easy for everyone to keep up. Very smart platform design. I'm very d…

Exactly, Signal creator is actively against 3rd party clients, because they use his infrastructure for free: https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...

The issue was branding, not bandwidth. There’re 3rd party clients:

https://github.com/mollyim/mollyim-android

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#210

Post by eptcyka »

tomComb wrote: post #198
josu wrote: post #154

The founder's response to the article: Why users shouldn’t worry about ads on Telegram I read an article that cautioned users from switching to Telegram from other apps, because "Telegram is going to introduce ads". This is misleading for at least 3 reasons: 1. There will be no ads in chats on Telegram. Users who rely on Telegram as a messaging app, not a social network, will never see ads. Private chats and group ch…

> User data will not be used to target ads. I actually prefer personalized (targeted) ads, as long as it is a company I trust with my data. And they generate more revenue so they would need fewer ads. I realize people will argue that they don't generate more revenue, but if that were true then how has this whole industry developed around them? By tossing out personalized ads we are throwing out the baby with the bath…

Most of the nasty things around the internet can be traced back to personalized ads.
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