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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

#291

Post by vondro »

meibo wrote: post #187
Angostura wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Give Telegram or Matrix a try. They are both miles ahead of Signal and their teams on both sides actually seem to care about openness and usability. Signal actively discourages third-party clients and doesn't accept community contributions in most cases(not that you'd actually want to, because their codebases are trash.) We can do better. Matrix with bridges and your own server is quite a nice experience. Have a look…

I get why Signal's approach can be unpopular, but I don't understand the fascination with Telegram to be honest. Sure, the Android app is nice and fluid, but if I needed to use an app that is not e2e encrypted, I can use sms, or Facebook Messenger. Both have much wider adoption than Telegram.

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

#292

Post by solarkraft »

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…

I 100% agree. I've gotten so much out of this service and wouldn't at all mind giving back.

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

#293

Post by TheButlerian »

vxNsr wrote: post #272
Sunspark wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thing your family has no access to the internet, otherwise they might be exposed porn in google image search.

That’s a very reductive take... especially considering I stated that their internet access is pretty limited. Just because most Americans or even most people in the world think the vileness of R-rated stuff is inevitable and harmless doesn’t make them right. It absolutely warps your view of humanity and imho many ppl today suffer from PTSD and don’t even realize it, just thinking their altered brain chemistry is a no…

Hang yourself, retard!

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

#294

Post by ComodoHacker »

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…

>I actually prefer personalized (targeted) ads, as long as it is a company I trust with my data.

Can you name an ad company you personally would trust?

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

#295

Post by robbiep »

ddeck wrote: post #155
hypertele-Xii wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WhatsApp doesn't let me login from two mobile devices. Can't use it from phone and tablet at the same. It's moronic. Telegram does, so...

You may not prefer it, but I don't think it's moronic; it was a design choice. Whatsapp messages pass through their servers, but do not remain there. They are effectively sent from the sending device to the receiving device. This means that your messages reside on your device. When you use the desktop or web client, it's basically remote operating your phone. This famously allowed Whatsapp to achieve massive scale wi…

I don’t know how true that really is.

I have never used backup for WhatsApp but just the other day, out of the blue, every conversation from late 2017 to now that I had deleted popped back into my inbox.

Can’t explain that one easily

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

#296

Post by Aachen »

golergka wrote: post #258
Aachen wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tr…

Quickly searching your chat history, going through all your contacts and group chats, 8 years back, without the need to downloading all that history to your device and building a search index first is a killer feature. Wouldn't it be impossible to implement without trusting the server with plaintext?

I wouldn't mind not having that feature of searching so far back instantly on a new device. How often do you login to a new device and want to immediately instantly search back to the beginning of time? I get that it's nice but... is that necessary?

There are various solutions to the problem of storing and searching history with different trade-offs. One of them is having the server store and be able to read everything since the dawn of time. I'm not a big fan of this one.

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

#297

Post by cwhiz »

nomel wrote: post #243
cwhiz wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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? If it were so obvious that targeted ads increase revenue, you’d think that the advertising industry would be able to prove it. They can’t.

I find this unlikely. If I had a random sampling of ads shown to me, 50% would be for women, and the majority wouldn't even be in English. I definitely exist in some relatively small demographic, where the majority of any non targeted scatter shot would be annoying noise.

You're mixing up relevance and efficacy. Just because an ad is relevant doesn’t mean you’re more likely to buy. And it’s that second part, efficacy, that the ad industry can’t prove.

To you, it’s obviously superior. But if it were obviously generating more revenue, the ad industry would easily be able to prove it. They can’t.

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-part-1/

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

#298

Post by GrinningFool »

davidweatherall wrote: post #47
GrinningFool wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP but I'm coming from what sounds like the same place. In theory yes but does the ad SDK used by the app still gather data on me, even though the ads are turned off/app is paid for? Without clear indication that it will not, the answer for me is 'no'.

Cool! Thanks for the reply - so you'd feel much more comfortable with a subscription to opt out of all tracking and ads?

Yeah, if I could reasonably verify that the tracking was not occurring. Unfortunately in today's environment, trust is also an issue.

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

#300

Post by andyjih_ »

EGreg wrote: post #283
7v3x3n3sem9vv wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you trust Telegram more than Signal?

It is built by an anarchist person who always refused to give out personal info of people to the point where his company was taken from him, and he ran away to France. He and his brother hired a ton of PhDs and made lots of paid challenges that no one could break their encryption. Their software is open sourced. The encryption Moxie Marlinspike uses was conveniently funded by the very US government agencies intereste…

That tweet you linked is from the CEO of Telegram. Seems likely he wants to sow doubt about his competitors.
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