

Ask HN: Why is Telegram Messenger not popular in US? - tuyguntn

Comparing to Whatsapp, Telegram has awesome performance, when someone sends you message and you have installed in &gt;2 devices they are instantly updated, If I open message from one another device shows it as read instantly, blazingly fast for me syncing two devices in such speed.<p>Why is the Telegram Messenger not popular in US?
~60-70Mln users are small comparing to Whatsapp, WeChat, Line, Kakao, Kik.
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nostrademons
Whatsapp is just barely becoming popular in the U.S, and WeChat, Line, and
Kakao are basically non-existent. I hadn't even heard of the last 4 messenger
programs you mentioned.

The reasons are pretty complicated, but I'd wager that it's largely because
Apple, Google, Facebook, and SnapChat are all U.S. companies, and so iMessage,
Hangouts, Facebook Messenger, and SnapChat are all perfectly adequate
communication tools in the U.S. All of my friends use Hangouts, for example,
because they're Google employees (except one who uses iMessage because he was
the tech lead for iMessage). The only reason I'd even heard of Whatsapp is
because a number of my wife's business school friends are from India.

Social software tends to be very regional, like how LiveJournal is huge in
Russia, Orkut was big in Brazil in India but virtually unknown in the U.S, and
the majority of Chinese are on some social network that most Americans have
never heard of. It's not surprising that most Americans would use software
developed by U.S. companies.

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wishinghand
>I hadn't even heard of the last 4 messenger programs you mentioned.

(USA resident here). I'd say Kik is huge amongst young people. A lot of people
also use it to message casual sex/booty calls on the side if they don't want
to use their main texting app.

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traviagio
It took Whatsupp at least 6-7 years to get on the map in USA I would say. I
remember the first time I installed it was during the BlackBerry messenger era
when people wanted a nice iPhone but were freaking out about their BBMs.
Telegram is awesome but it will take a long time until it goes mainstream if
ever. That space is totally overcrowded now.

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hanniabu
A bunch of my friends and I use Telegram and we're from the US and absolutely
love it. Actually, every person I convince to switch to Telegram loves it and
refuses to continue using Whatsapp and tries to get their friends to change as
well because of that. Full platform support without those QR scanning, great
library of stickers/emojies, they have open api chat bots, in-app gif and
image searches, you can reply to messages to help maintain context, preview
links in-app...there's really so many great benefits over Whatsapp, not to
mention it's free.

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jordsmi
I really wish Telegram or Whatsapp was more used. I stuck using kik which is
such a terrible app. No web interface and if I need to sign into a different
account I lose all chat history.

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Avalaxy
Personally I don't use it because I really don't see how giving up my data to
some shady Russian guy is better than handing it over to Facebook.

