
Telegram Now Seeing 12B Daily Messages, Up from 1B in February - caio1982
http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/21/telegram-now-seeing-12bn-daily-messages-up-from-1m-in-february/
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slasaus
> “If you have WhatsApp on your phone and your battery’s low and your phone
> goes dead, suddenly you can’t get access to your messages. It’s over. It’s
> not cross device. It doesn’t have cross-device sync. You can’t send
> documents or big media. There are lots of limitations in the group chats, in
> your communication. It’s not private. So I’m not sure I was a big fan of
> WhatsApp about three years ago, and I’m not sure I am now,” he said.

Unfortunately, E2E encrypted chat doesn't work when using these multi-device
features, and so most contacts of mine don't use the privacy or security
features of Telegram.

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superuser2
It _can_ ; Apple's approach is to distribute lists of public keys instead of
single ones. The seem to have the same threat profile: Apple can be compelled
to silently add a public key to the keybag; Telegram can probably be compelled
to silently replace a public key with an MITMed version.

~~~
slasaus
You're right and I believe WhisperSystems is doing something similar (or was
at least working on it last year when I spoke with one of the developers). I
vaguely remember them claiming that group chat is about the same as multi-
device, cryptography-wise.

I specifically meant Telegrams E2E implementation. Apart from other problems
with it [1] the fact that it's not on by default, as others have stated, makes
that most people (especially non-technical users) don't use it.

[1]
[https://github.com/zhukov/webogram/issues/126#issuecomment-1...](https://github.com/zhukov/webogram/issues/126#issuecomment-127982342)

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yojo
I'm surprised by these numbers. 60m monthly actives generating 12bn messages
per day. So on average each active user sends 200 messages every day. That
seems astoundingly high. Can someone more familiar with engagement metrics for
this type of service comment?

~~~
Arnt
That probably means people use group chat.

Suppose five people chat for a minute. 20-30 lines of text sent to four people
(5 minus the sender) equals 80-120 countable messages. And if Telegram users
act like on some old IRC channels, and have long-running chat sessions that
most attendees don't pay attention to, you can get thousands per day per user.

~~~
anc84
They might also include presence messaging to inflate their numbers.

~~~
Arnt
Unlikely; people's presence wobbliness may have grown since February, but by a
factor of 12? Nah.

I have a feeling that the main change may have been a better UI on the group
chat.

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superlupo
Why not use TextSecure/Signal? It's now available on iOS and Android, is open
source and encrypted by default.

I've tried Telegram, but only 1-on-1-chats could be encrypted, and also only
optional.

~~~
Arnt
Perhaps because the lag is a bit of a pain.

I use textsecure. Sometimes messages arrive nine hours late.

~~~
infruset
Really? My experience has been that for some reason, on some phones, messages
are only downloaded when the app is opened, which is really annoying but seems
to be an interaction-with-the-OS issue rather than a networking issue.

However, messages are always sent and received immediately on phones without
this issue (still in my experience).

~~~
Arnt
On my phone (a Nexus 5 running CM), messages arrive promptly on most days, but
on some days they only arrive when I open TS. On my wife's phone (different
brand) they mostly arrive only she opens TS.

But that's a digression. The point of my comment was that this experience can
be rather a turnoff if you happen to notice it really soon after your first
install. It's easy to believe that a whole group of people is turned off by
one member's negative first experience.

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ubercow
I've gotten most of my friends to switch to Telegram from Hangouts and SMS.

Love all the features, especially group chats.

~~~
noja
Why? Group chats aren't encrypted. What's the advantage?

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wingerlang
I've only ever heard people mention encryption on sites like HN etc. Do you
guys think the normal IM user (vast vast majority) care in the slightest about
encryption? Not trying to sound snarky.

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noja
Telegram was sold as the "secure messaging app".

~~~
wingerlang
Ok, did not know that. I do wonder if the majority of the users use it for
that, or if they followed the early adopters that, obviously, care about that.

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gobengo
How many are from bots?

~~~
cordite
I have not witnessed any bots, or at least the kinds that randomly send
contact requests or messages like MSN/Skype/Kik

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z1x2
I use Telegram daily and like it very much, but one thing has bothered me for
so long, that there is no meaningful way to search through messages in a
language like Chinese. It looks that they only allow search with words, not in
characters within words. It is so arrogant for them to ignore this for so long
after users brought up the issue.

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mtgx
So does the NSA (Telegram is still not encrypted end-to-end _by default_ ,
lest we forget).

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MichaelGG
Yet it's the only user-friendly, "full featured" messaging app that offers an
E2E option.

I'm not a fan of Telegram. Their custom crypto and arrogance while seemingly
denying any issues doesn't inspire confidence. Yet I have not found another
option that's friendly enough to get other users to sign up for. I tried
TextSecure/Signal, but message deliverability wasn't reliable enough, and it
lacks things like sending voice messages. It feels less polished than
Telegram, which impacts users wanting to use it.

~~~
qznc
I don't use Telegram, but Threema seems "full featured" enough for me. It is
proprietary though. It is what I recommend to friends until TextSecure/Signal
is good enough.

~~~
danieldk
The problem is that most of my family and friends won't pay for a messaging
app. Messaging apps are seen as something that is (always) free. So, the
incentive to switch from Facebook Chat, Hangouts, or Whatsapp to Threema is
near zero.

Although I haven't pushed any messaging app, at least some of my friends are
on Telegram.

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dombili
Telegram is a pro-privacy app? In what universe?

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JupiterMoon
It is an illusion of privacy app.

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dombili
Yeah, which is worse because it creates a false sense of security.

